A Two-Stage Authentication Approach for Low-Latency Handoff in WLANs
Abstract：IEEE 802.11 WLANs are widely deployed nowadays. While a mobile device is moving around, it may need to do handoff that usually requires authentication, this results in long processing delay and leads to degradation of quality of services provisioned to the mobile device. Existing authentication methods such as AAA and IEEE 802.1x mechanisms are unable to accommodate low-latency handoff. In this work, we propose a two-stage authentication approach that allows a mobile device to perform authentication through fast handover protocol and obtain a temporary certificate from the targeted access point before roaming to the new domain, so that it can resume the authorized access quickly by using the temporary certificate. The mobile device must perform re-authentication to complete the normal authentication process within a short period; otherwise its authorized access will be terminated. Simulation results show that our two-stage authentication approach significantly reduces the handoff latency and packet loss during the handoff process.
Keywords：wireless local area networkslow latency handofftwo-stage authenticationtemporary certificate
Publication Date：2009-01-01
Online Publishing Date：2025-08-15(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：9( 73-81 )