Threshold-based key management scheme for space network

The data link protocols proposed by the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) is widely used in space missions. However, the current space key management schemes are inefficient in scalability, security, and key update. In this work, a threshold-based spatial key management scheme is proposed and applied to the CCSDS telecommunication control (TC) protocol to ensure the security of spatial networks. The threshold-based key management algorithm using LDPC code is designed to generate, distribute, update, and deactivate the master key. The bilinear pairing cryptosystem is used to protect the group key and provide authentication. The security and performance of the proposed scheme are analyzed. Furthermore, the network model, node model, and process model of CCSDS-TC protocol based on the proposed scheme are constructed and simulated on OPNET platform. The result shows that the storage overhead of the proposed scheme is lower than the improved Shamir and ECC-based key management schemes. Its computational overhead is approximately changeless, whereas the network scale is increasing. Furthermore, the proposed scheme only uses binary multiplication, which takes lower computation overhead. Therefore, the proposed scheme has higher security, scalability, and low resource consumption.