In contrast with conventional networks, mobile ad hoc networks usually do not provide
online access to trusted authorities or to centralized servers, and they exhibit frequent
partitioning due to link and node failures and to node mobility. For these reasons, traditional
security solutions that require online trusted authorities or certificate repositories are not well-
suited for securing ad hoc networks. We propose a fully self-organized public-key
management system that allows users to generate their public-private key pairs, to issue …

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a self-organized, multi-hop wireless communication
network formed by a set of mobile nodes without relying on an established infrastructure.
Self-organized public key authentication in a MANET provides security in an otherwise
hostile environment by requiring participating mobile nodes to cooperate in the
establishment and continued organization of an ad hoc network. However, limitations of
hardware resources such as processing power, battery, storage and bandwidth, tend to …