RSA--Based Distributed Certificate Authorities in MANETs Design Requirements and Evaluation Framework

Abstract

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) have emerged as an important communication paradigm due to their ability to establish wireless connections without relying on fixed infrastructure. The decentralized and dynamic nature of MANETs makes them suitable for military operations, disaster recovery, emergency communications, and remote-area networking. However, the absence of centralized administration introduces significant security challenges, particularly in node authentication, certificate management, and key distribution. Traditional authentication mechanisms based on centralized Certificate Authorities (CAs) are not well suited for MANET environments because they create a single point of failure and may become inaccessible due to network partitioning or node mobility. To address these limitations, several distributed certificate authority schemes have been proposed in the literature. These approaches distribute the CA functionality among multiple nodes to improve availability and fault tolerance. Nevertheless, many existing solutions rely on predefined trusted nodes, static trust assumptions, or partially centralized architectures, which reduce their effectiveness in highly dynamic environments. Furthermore, certificate renewal and revocation processes often generate additional communication overhead and increase management complexity. In this work, a fully self-organized certificate authority model based on the RSA cryptographic algorithm is considered. Every node in the network acts as a dealer and participates in distributed key management. The proposed framework aims to reduce dependence on dedicated authority nodes. In addition, polynomial--based secret sharing techniques are employed to support certificate renewal and revocation procedures. The motivation is to coordinate distributed trust mobility while making the cryptographic setup and certificate--management assumptions explicit. The reported performance indicators are retained as descriptive results; their reproducibility and statistical uncertainty require further documentation. A consistent binding between the shared secret and a common RSA signing key remains a technical requirement to be resolved.