A Certificate-Less Distributed Key Management Scheme for Space Networks

The specificity and complexity of space networks render the traditional key management mechanism no longer applicable. The certificate-less-based distributed spatial network key management scheme proposed in this paper combines the characteristics of space networks, solving the problems regarding the difficulty of implementing centralized key management in space networks and the excessive overhead required for maintaining public key certificates by constructing a distributed key generation center and establishing strategies such as private key updates, master key component updates, and session key negotiation. This method also avoids the key escrow problem inherent in existing identity-based key management schemes. This scheme provides the DPKG construction method for space networks; designs the update strategy for the DPKG node’s master key sharing, providing a specific update algorithm; introduces the batch private key update mechanism; and uses the mapping function to evenly distribute the node’s update requests throughout the update time period, avoiding the problem of overly concentrated update requests. After analysis and simulation verification, it was proven that the scheme can meet the necessary security requirements, offering good stability and scalability.