On optimal batch rekeying for secure group communications in wireless networks

Advances in wireless communications and mobile computing have led to the emergence of group communications and applications over wireless. In many of these group interactions, new members can join and current members can leave at any time, and existing members must communicate securely to achieve application-specific missions or network-specific functionality. Since wireless networks are resource-constrained, a key challenge is to provide secure and efficient group communication mechanisms that satisfy application requirements while minimizing the communication cost. Instead of individual rekeying, i.e., performing a rekey operation right after each join or leave request, periodic batch rekeying has been proposed to alleviate rekeying overhead in resource-constrained wireless networks. In this paper, we propose an analytical model to address the issue of how often batch rekeying should be performed. We propose threshold-based batch rekeying schemes and demonstrate that an optimal rekey interval exists for each scheme. We further compare these schemes to identify the best scheme that can minimize the communication cost of rekeying while satisfying application requirements when given a set of parameter values characterizing the operational and environmental conditions of the system. In a highly dynamic wireless environment in which the system parameter values change at runtime, our work may be used to adapt the rekeying interval accordingly.