Title: A novel localised authentication scheme in IEEE 802.11 based Wireless Mesh Networks

Authors: Xiaodong Lin, Xinhua Ling, Haojin Zhu, Pin-Han Ho, Xuemin Sherman Shen

Addresses: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada. ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada. ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada. ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada. ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada

Abstract: In the paper, we propose an efficient two-factor localised authentication scheme for inter-domain handover and roaming in IEEE 802.11 based service-oriented wireless mesh networks (WMNs). Some important aspects, such as resource-constraint Mobile Stations (MSs) and the ping-pong movement phenomenon when handover roaming across different hotspots occurs, are considered. An analytic model is developed to investigate the efficiency of the proposed scheme. Numerical results are given to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed scheme in terms of the resultant signalling overhead, power consumption, and authentication latency, compared with the legacy authentication schemes without losing the capability of preserving the system security.

Keywords: localised authentication; roaming; wireless LANs; wireless mesh networks; WMNs; hotspots; local area networks; wireless networks; security; IEEE 802.11; signalling overhead; power consumption; authentication latency.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSN.2008.017225

International Journal of Security and Networks, 2008 Vol.3 No.2, pp.122 - 132

Published online: 19 Feb 2008 *

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