Federico Frosali

Analysis of secure handover for IEEE 802.1x-based wireless ad hoc networks

The handover procedure in secure communication wireless networks is an extremely time-consuming phase, and it represents a critical issue in relation to the time constraints required by certain real-time traffic applications. In particular, in the case of the IEEE 802.1X model, most of the time required for a handover is used for packet exchanges that are required for authentication protocols, such as Extensible Authentication Protocol Transport Layer Security (EAP-TLS), that require an eight-way handshake. Designing secure re-authentication protocols to reduce the number of packets required during a handover is an open issue that is gaining interest with the advent of a pervasive model of networking that requires realtime traffic and mobility. This article presents the 802.1X model and evaluates its application to ad hoc networks based on IEEE 802.11 i or IEEE 802.1 be standards, focusing on the problems that must be evaluated when designing handover procedures, and suggesting guidelines for securing handover procedures. It also presents a novel protocol to perform secure handovers that is respectful of the previous analysis and that has been implemented in a mesh environment.

Secure, fast handhoff techniques for 802.1X based wireless network

Wireless networks that support client mobility have to face the challenge of providing a secure, performant handoff between different access points. IEEE 802.1X [1] model provides a secure mechanism used by many standard protocols to securely generate keying material between two peer hosts when one of the two is accessing the network for first time, but that is hardly usable for reauthentication during handoff procedures without loss of performance. This paper deals with the proposal of a novel scheme to transport authentication credentials during handoff that uses a two-way only exchange with the backend authentication server maintaining the security of the system. As a high-level method it can be applied to different types of network, such as IEEE 802.11i [2] infrastructure or ad-hoc mode networks in a mesh environment.

Analysis and design of a TETRA-DMO and IEEE 802.11 integrated network

During last years modern telecommunication systems have achieved important results in terms of reliability, coverage and data rate, allowing a high variety of applications services. Among others, TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio) is one of the most important in the professional market; in particular, the DMO (Direct Mode Operation) mode allows half-duplex direct communications among users without the need of an infrastructure. However, TETRA-DMO cannot perform multi-hop communications, limiting both the coverage and the scalability of the whole network. The idea behind our proposal is an integration between TETRA-DMO and another more flexible wireless system (e.g., IEEE 802.11), where the TETRA-DMO is the access technology, thus allowing the use of standard TETRA-DMO terminals, while the IEEE 802.11 technology can be used as a flexible multi-hop meshed backbone technology for interconnecting remote TETRA-DMO areas.