Feasibility study for authenticated key exchange protocols on underwater acoustic sensor networks

The paper concerns a comparative performance evaluation of protocols for two honest parties to securely share a common secret session key in an Underwater Acoustic Sensor Network (UASN) scenario. The simulation-based comparison is performed by implementing in SUNSET SDCS three key exchange protocols and two solutions for implicit certificate distribution. The three key exchange solutions are the Fully Hashed Menezes-Qu-Vanstone, the Hashed One-pass Menezes-Qu-Vanstone (both based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography) and Diffie-Hellman. Certificate distribution is performed via the Elliptic Curve Qu-Vanstone protocol (implicit) and by X.509 certificates (explicit). Combinations of the selected protocols are considered to secure multipath-based communications in UASNs of different size. Investigated metrics concern the energy consumed and the time required to complete the exchange of keys between two nodes. Our results show that implicit certificates-based solutions obtain application-dependent tradeoffs between security and energy efficiency and a level of security comparable to that of the standard, terrestrial combination of Diffie-Hellman with the X.509 explicit certificates.