A Handoff Authentication Protocol for Reducing Re-authentication Process of Wireless Nodes in WMN
Yoon-Su Jeong, Yong-Tae Kim · 한국정보기술학회논문지 · 2011
Based on mesh network characteristics that mesh routers(MRs) are fixed without power limitations, security technologies proposed for an ad hoc network are also applied to a wireless mesh network(WMN). However, since the MRs of a WMN can constitute a single network without administrator configuration in order to exchange information with neighboring MRs, a WMN is vulnerable to attackers manipulating MRs and conducting malicious activities. This paper proposes a handoff authentication protocol for reducing mesh client(MC) re-authentication overheads and the MR authentication process when MCs that form the WMN environment travel between MRs. In order to enhance the safety of MRs, the proposed protocol divides the key used in MRs in random sizes to protect the information of the packets that pass through MRs. Furthermore, the proposed protocol performs light mutual authentication and key agreement processes among mesh routers and uses the reliable authentication data of the previous mesh router when there is an abrupt increase in the number of users accessing a mesh router for seamless communication of the wireless node.