A secure group communication approach for tactical network environments

Group communication protocols that utilize multicast or local broadcast transmissions are more efficient than point-to-point protocols when disseminating the same information to multiple recipients. This is particularly true for Situation Awareness information at the tactical edge, which is transmitted from each sender to all receivers. However, group communications protocols do not address requirements for strong security mechanisms. This paper describes a novel approach that has been developed to provide secure group communications specifically to support dismounted warfighters at the tactical edge. The protocol has been incorporated into the Agile Computing Middleware's Proactive Dissemination Service (DSPro) and supports a variety of requirements such as dynamic authorization and de-authorization of clients as well as disruption-tolerant group communications.