Mobile Ad-hoc network (MANET) is an effective network administration framework that encourages trading data between remote mobile devices, without the utilization of remote access points and base stations. Security has become a major concern in mobile ad hoc networks. Providing security is the very big challenge in MANET, due to lack of infrastructure, frequent host mobility, and unreliable wireless media. We are using cryptography techniques to provide secure communication in mobile ad hoc networks. To provide security using cryptography, key management is playing a vital role. The key management includes key generation, storage, distribution, revocation, and updating. The authorized group key distributions are the difficult task in MANET. Various types of key management protocols are symmetric, asymmetric, group and hybrid. In a group key management, when a member joins or leaves the group, it needs to generate a new key immediately to maintain authentication or secrecy. The group key management is categorized into three types such as centralized, decentralized and distributed. In this paper, we analyze the performance of different group key management protocol scheme based on some important measure like reliability, limitations, services, storage cost, scalability, intermediate operation, and vulnerabilities. Finally, different categories of key management protocols compared and the results are tabulated
Performance Analysis of Secure Group Key Mechanism in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks