M. Sandhya Rani et al.

/ International Journal on Computer Science and Engineering (IJCSE)

Simulation of A Novel Scalable Group Key

Management Protocol for Mobile Adhoc
Networks
M. Sandhya Rani
Research Scholar at JNTUH and Assoc.Professor ,
Bhoj Reddy Engineering College for Women,
Hyderabad, Telangana state, India.
Email: [email protected]
Dr.R.Rekha
Assoc. Prof, University College of Engineering & Technology,
MGU, Nalgonda, Telangana state, India.
Email: [email protected]
Dr.K.V.N Sunitha
Professor, BVRIT Engineering College,
JNTU, Hyderabad, Telangana state, India.
Email:[email protected]
Abstract— A Mobile Adhoc Network (MANET) is a collection of autonomous nodes that communicate with
each other ,most frequently using a multi-hop wireless network. Secure and multicast group communication is
an active area of research in MANETS. The main problem in secure group communication is group dynamics
and key management. Group key management is crucial for multicast security. Member joining and member
leaving from the group is the main challenge in designing secure and scalable group communication for
dynamic update of keys. Most of the proposed solutions for wired networks are not considering this parameter
and so suffer from the one-affects-n scalability problem. This paper presents the simulation of A Novel Scalable
Group Key Management Protocol (NSGKMP) for wireless Adhoc Networks and demonstrates the simulation
results through NAM(Network Animator) in NetworkSimulator2 (NS2). This NSGKMP for MANETs approach
decreases number of rekeying operations when a member joins in to the group or leaves from the group i.e.
dynamic updating of keys.
Keywords- MANET, NSGKMP, NAM, Rekeying, join and leave .
I.INTRODUCTION
Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) is a collection of self-configurable nodes or terminals which
communicate with each other by forming a multi-hop radio network and maintaining connectivity in a
decentralized manner. Many applications of adhoc networks involve collaborative computing among a large
number of nodes and are thus group-oriented in nature. The conventional security solutions to provide key
management through accessing trusted authorities or centralized servers are infeasible for this new environment
since Mobile Adhoc Networks are characterized by the absence of any infrastructure, frequent mobility, and
wireless links. In wired networks, many group key management protocols have been proposed and
simulated[6,7],Efficient Group key(EGK), Tree Group Diffie-Hellman (TGDH), Logical key
hierarchy(LKH),Skinny TRee (STR) and Computation and Communication Efficient Group Key (CCEGK) .
However, these approaches are not directly applicable to ad hoc networks, because the communication cost per
node can become very high for a large adhoc network with very dynamic group membership. So far very few
group rekeying schemes have been proposed for ad hoc networks. They either use public-key techniques [8], or
adapt the LKH scheme for ad hoc networks [9]. Public-key based schemes [8] are more expensive than
symmetric-key based schemes in both communication and computation. The adapted LKH scheme [9] incurs
the computational and communication cost that is of the same order as the LKH scheme .
In this paper, we present the simulation of a Novel Scalable Group Key Management
Protocol(NSGKMP) for Wireless Mobile Adhoc Networks. In NSGKMP protocol, other than secure group
communication forward secrecy and backward secrecy are maintained among the nodes. Forward secrecy
prevents an accessing current communication by old member after it leaves from the group. Backward secrecy
prevents an accessing of the communication sent before a new member joins to the group. To do so, a re-keying
process should be performed after every join or leaving a member from the secure group. It consists in
generating a new TEK and distributing it to all group members. The main problem with any re-keying technique

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is scalability: as the re-keying process should be performed after every member join or leave from the group.
The computational and communication overhead induced may be important in case of frequent join and leave
operation to group.
NSGKMP for MANETS is based on the Chineese Remainder Theorem and a hierarchical graph B-
Tree,in which each node contains two keys and a modulus[2,3]. The previous approach [2] is concentrated on to
decrease number of re-keying operations, i.e. from to when compared with [3], where n is the
number of leaf nodes of tree and m is the order of the B-Tree. Here we are taken order of B-Tree is 3(i.e.
m= 3).In [1], NSGKMP for wired networks has been simulated. This paper presents brief introduction to
NetworkSimulator2 (NS2) and simulation of NSGKMP approach for MANETs with the help of
NetworkSimulator2 (NS2) NAM. And we showed that number of rekeying operations are less in NSGKMP for
MANETS than SGKMP[3] through NAM visualizations.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section II presents Structure Of MANET nodes
for Proposed Approach , Section III presents Simulation Environment, Section IV presents Simulation Results,
Section V presents performance of the protocol and Section VI gives the conclusion.
II. STRUCTURE OF MANET NODES FOR PROPOSED APPROACHS
Several Group Key management schemes have been proposed with different network structures and
topologies: random fashion, tree structure, hierarchical and hybrid[4,8].In this paper we present the B-Tree
structure as shown in Fig. 1 for group communication to deploy the MANET nodes . In B-Tree of order m,
each node contains at most m-1 elements and each node contains at least -1 elements. The Fig. 1 describes
that a B-Tree of order 3, so each node consists of at most 2 elements, And maintaining users of the group at leaf
nodes of B-Tree. So each leaf node consists of 2 users. i.e. node21 consists of user’s u1 and u2 , node22
consists of user’s u3 and u4 node29 consists of user’s u17 andu18 .
In the Fig. 1 user u18 wants to join into the group. After joining in to the group to provide backward
secrecy we are changing the parent’s key from leaf to the root node that was indicated in the Fig. 1. After
changing the parent’s keys, the changed keys are sent to the corresponding children’s that was shown in the
simulation. In [3], binary tree structure is used. When the group is large, the number of levels in the binary tree
will be more which increases number of keys at member. Extending this scheme to B-Tree will reduce the
height of the tree reducing number of keys at each member. At the same time we should consider server side
storage i.e. number of keys at the level of the tree. In [3], keys are maintained by the every member in
the tree, extending the scheme to B-tree will result in maintaining keys by the members of the B-tree
(where m is the order of B-tree and n is the number of leaf nodes ).

Fig. 1 Group Structure in B-Tree format

III. SIMULATION ENVIRONMENT

A.Simulation Model
Our proposed protocol simulations have been carried out using Network Simulator version 2 (NS-
2.35) and its associated tools for animation and analysis of results.NS2 is an event driven network simulator
tool. We chose a Linux platform i.e. UBUNTU 12.10, as Linux offers a number of programming development
tools that can be used with the simulation process. NS-2 allows a user to emulate network traffic as it actually
occurs on physical networks. We used ftp traffic for packet transmission to implement our proposed protocol.
The software simulates switches, routers, connections and traffic sources of various kinds. Traditionally, NS2 is
used to model new versions of communication protocols like Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and
Ethernet, and it can also model new forms of traffic generation, like the group key management simulation for

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wired and wireless networks. We analyzed our experimental results in NAM(Network Animator) trace file. To
evaluate the performance of NSGKMP for MANETs, we find the Rekeying path and number of rekeying
messages in a group of nodes through NAM animation .
B. Simulation Parameters
The simulation parameters used in our work are listed in Table 1.
TABLE I. SIMULATION PARAMETERS

Parameters Value
Simulator NS-2(Version 2.35)
Channel Type Channel/Wireless Channel
Routing protocol AODV
Traffic type FTP
Simulation Duration 300ms
MAC Layer Protocol 802.11
Max. No. Nodes 26
Transmission Range 1000x1000m
Packet Size 512 Bytes

C. NAM Animation
Nam is a Tcl/Tk based animation tool that is used to visualize the ns simulations and real world packet trace
data. The first step to use nam is to produce a nam trace file. The nam trace file should contain topology
information like nodes, links, queues, node connectivity etc as well as packet trace information. We showed our
new protocol NSGKMP for MANETs using NAM animations. Animation permits the user to promptly see the
status of each part of the network. NAM lets users change the animation speed and play it forward or backward,
fast forward, fast backward, making it easy to find and inspect appealing occurrences.
IV.SIMULATION RESULTS
B-Tree of order 3 was constructed using NS2 simulator. According to B-Tree(order 3) property each
node consists of two elements. In the Fig. 2, green hexagon shape node pairs are treated as root node. i.e. labels
(1) and (2). The blue square shape node pairs i.e. labels (4) and (5), (6) and (7), (8) and (9) are treated as
intermediate nodes of a tree. Leaf circle shape node pairs are labeled with (16) and (17), (18) and (19), ……..
(36) and (37) treated as users of the group.
We are showing in our simulations that a node labeled with (20) joining in to the group and a parent
node changes it’s key after joining the new node and it sends the new key to it’s children. The following are the
snapshots of our NAM simulation The following Fig. 2 showing the group of MANET nodes in B-Tree format
of order 3.Thus we placed 2 elements at each node.

.
Fig 2. Creation of MANET nodes in B-Tree format and Labeling to nodes

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In Fig. 3 user 20 wants to join to the group that is indicated by orange color.

Fig 3. User 20 wants to join to the group

After user 20 joins in to the group his parent i.e. (5) was changed his key. It is shown with Red color.

Fig 4 Node 5 changed it’s key

After changing the parent’s key, the changed key was sent to the corresponding children , i.e. (20) and (21)

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Fig 5. Node 5 sending changed key to it’s children 20 & 21

After changing the key of (5), his parent (1) key also changed, so the changed key was sent to his
children (4), (5), (6) and (7), that was shown in the Fig. 6.

Fig 6. Node 1 sending changed key to it’s children 4,5,6,7

Finally the number of re-keying operations from leaf to the root node indicated by Orange color nodes shown
in Fig 7.

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Fig 7. Rekeying operations performed at nodes 5, 1

V. PERFORMANCE OF THE NEW PROTOCOL

This session provides the performance of our proposed approach for MANETs , by comparing with
the protocol of [3]. Table 2 gives the comparison between our approach and [3].It is shown from Fig. 7 that
NSGKMP for MANETs has less number of Re-keying operations when a member joins to the group.(i.e only 2
operations).
TABLE II. COMPARISON OF NEW PROTOCOL WITH SGKMP

Scalability Number of Re-keying operations

metrics
Protocols join Leave

NSGKMP for MANETs

SGKMP

VI. CONCLUSION
To improve the scalability in Group communication, we proposed A Novel Scalable Group Key
Management Protocol for MANETs and demonstrated that it has better scalability in terms of number of Re-
keying operations. And also Our approach satisfies all the Security attributes of the Group key management
System during the Rekeying process. The process of entire approach was simulated in network simulator NS2
and presented the simulation results through NAM. Finally we conclude that if we increase the order of B-Tree,
then automatically we can decrease the number of re-keying operations further more. As a future work, instead
of unicasting the rekeying messages to the nodes, broadcasting may be done that will reduce the number of
messages sent through the network.
REFERENCES
[1] Amruta sagar Kavarthapu and Aswini Kavarthapu , “Simulation of A Novel Scalable Group Key Management Protocol”,
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[2] Amruta sagar Kavarthapu and Seshagirirao Ganta , “A Novel Scalable Group Key Management Protocol “, International Journal of
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[3] Ronggong Song and George O. M. Yee, “A Scalable Group Key Management Protocol (SGKMP)”, IEEE Communication Letters,
vol. 12 , pp.541-543 , July2008.
[4] Renuka A and Dr. K .C .Shet , “Hierarchical Approach for Key Management in Mobile Adhoc Networks” ,International Journal of
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[5] D.SAMANTHA , Classic Data Structures, Prentice- Hall of India Private Limited, New Delhi-110001, 2006.
[6] S. Zheng , D. Manz , J. Alves -Foss, and Y. Chen. “Security and performance of group key agreement protocols” ,In Proc. IASTED
Networks and Communication Systems, pp 321–327, Mar 2006.
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[8] T. Kaya, G. Lin, G. Noubir, A. Yilmaz ,” Secure Multicast Groups on Ad Hoc Networks”, In Proc. of ACM Workshop
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[9] L. Lazos and R . Poovendran ,” Energy-Aware Secure Multicast Communication in Ad-hoc Networks Using Geographic Location
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AUTHORS’ PROFILE

M.Sandhya Rani obtained her B.Tech in CSE from JNTU in 2002 and M. Tech in CSE
from OU in 2008. She is pursuing Ph.D, in CSE from JNTUH, Hyderabad. She is working
as Associate Professor in Bhoj Reddy Engineering College for Women and has 12 yrs of
teaching experience. Her areas of interest include Network security and Mobile Computing.

Dr. Rekha Redamalla obtained her M.Tech(CS) from JNTU Hyderabad. She received
Ph.D (CS) from University of Udine(ITALY) in 2006. She has 18 years of Teaching
Experience and presently the Principal, University college of Engineering & Technology,
Mahatma Gandhi University, Nalgonda, Telangana state, India, Her areas of Interests are
Semantics of OOL, Network Security and DMDW. She published more than 15 papers in
International & National Journals and conferences.

Dr.K.V.N.Sunitha obtained her B.Tech ECE from Nagarjuna University, M.Tech

Computer Science from REC Warangal and Ph.D from JNTUH in 2006. She has 21
years of Teaching Experience, working as Professor & Principal, BVRIT college . She
is a recipient of Academic Excellence award by GNITS in 2005. She has received “Best
computer Science Engineering Teacher award” by ISTE (Indian society for Technical
education) in Feb 2008. She is guiding 12 PhD scholars & published more than 65
papers in International & National Journals and conferences. She has authored three
text books. She is Board of Studies member for many other Engg. colleges. She has
received funding for her research proposal from CSI Computer society of India. Her
auto biography is listed in Marquis who is who in the world , 28th edition 2011.She is a
fellow of Institution of Engineers, Sr. Member for IEEE & Life member for CSI.

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