Clever Ant Colony System for Key Covering Problem in the Group Rekeying

The key covering problem (KCP) in the group rekeying for secure multicast communication is NP-Hard. We try to introduce the ant colony optimization (ACO) idea to solve the KCP, but the KCP can’t be solved directly by the existing ant algorithms. So we design a new kind of heuristic algorithm, called clever ant colony system (CACS), for the KCP. Firstly, we establish a map from a secure multicast group to an auxiliary key graph (AKG). Secondly, according to the idea of the ant colony system (ACS), we design the CACS over AKG. Finally, using simulation, we verify that the CACS is feasible and keeps high performance with a very short time.