Performance and Security Enhancements to Fast Initial Link Setup in IEEE 802.11ah Wireless Networks
Lyuye Zhang, Maode Ma · 2018
The increasing deployment of smart devices has proved that Internet of Things (IoT) is an overwhelming trend for the next era. IEEE 802.11ah, a specification belonging to 802.11 Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) protocol family, has been recently released to support the long-range, low-power and low-rate wireless communication among smart devices used in IoT systems. However, security requirements on the energy- constrained devices have plenty of features different from the traditional devices. The overhead of messages has to be minimized, even though the entire performance might be compromised. There is an upcoming solution towards this problem discussed in IEEE group, which was described in IEEE 802.11ai, where the Fast Initial Link Setup (FILS) has been defined as a novel methodology aiming at establishing fast, stable and secure links among smart devices. This paper is to address the security issues of the IEEE 802.11ai specified wireless networks with a proposal of an enhancement to the authentication process in the setup procedures for the IEEE 802.11ah specified low power driven wireless sensor networks. The security functionality of the proposed solution is derived by BAN logic while the performance of the solution is evaluated by simulation experiments to demonstrate the advantages of the proposed solution.