Tunable Group Key Agreement

Abstract

Secure group communication has various applications. Requirements for an application differ in various parameters such as tolerance times for join and leave, arrival rate, departure rate, staying period and group life time. Existing group key agreement protocols do not harness knowledge of application requirements. In this paper we present scheme for tunable group key agreement. We introduce an application class awareness concept, rekeying algorithms and novel key tree structure. We simulated periodic refresh mode, periodic batch mode and controlled periodic refresh mode. Simulation experiment clearly shows that controlled periodic refresh mode outperforms periodic refresh mode and periodic batch mode.