Thang Tran

CSH-MU: Client based secure handoff solution for Mobile Units

The success and efficiency of managing an emergency situation (such as rescue operation, fire fighting etc.) depends on enabling a system that would ensure the timely availability of high-quality and latest information to the emergency Mobile Units (MU). The system must ensure the provisioning of relevant information in a secure manner irrespective of the location and/or mobility of the MU. The enabling of secure and ubiquitous communication services, while the MUs are on the move, becomes more of a challenge in heterogeneous network environments due to the fact that the present public cellular network infrastructure does not support IP based mobility management functions (MIPv6, mSCTP etc.) and moreover, the interoperability between different access technologies is not well defined. In view of these restrictions, we present in this paper a novel client-based secure handoff management solution that is self-sufficient, does not require and/or rely on any changes on part of the underlying network infrastructure and enables the use of standard web browsers as well. We will present the operational details of our proposed approach and also analyze its performance based on the real implementation over the public network infrastructure. The performance will also be analyzed with respect to the influence of security mechanism such as authentication and encryption on the performance of the vertical handover process and compare the results with the standard mobility solutions such as MIPv6/NEMO and mSCTP based on experimental test beds.

RFID Based Secure Mobile Communication Framework for Emergency Response Management

The present day challenge during emergency response is the lack of availability of latest and detailed information to the emergency personnel about the incident scene. The success of the fire mission planning depends critically on the ubiquitous availability of high-quality information (e.g., building plans, aerial photos, hazardous material databases, medical patient data) while the fire fighters are on the move. The information in question is usually distributed over several public authorities offices and, as of today, is requested of them via the traditional time-consuming postal services. Thus to ensure a secure and reliable access to such distributed databases while on the move, we present a comprehensive mobile framework that enables the interoperability of diverse information providers by using a newly proposed emergency Role based Authentication/Authorization Protocol (eRAAP). Moreover, we extend and integrate some important services in the proposed framework; such as the RFID fOr emergencY (ROY) feature that will enhance the system usability for fire brigades during rescue missions. For enabling seamless mobility support to such a system, the Network Mobility (NEMO) protocol is integrated in our framework. Besides providing functional details of the proposed framework, we will also provide performance analysis in terms of the response time and handover process based on our experimental testbed.

Energy-Efficient Handoff Decision Algorithms for CSH-MU Mobility Solution

Vertical handoff (VHO) is the key feature to increase the seamless services availability (i.e., cloud services) in a heterogeneous network environment that especially plays an important role in emergency use cases for reliable information retrieval. For precise handoff decisions, latest proposed vertical handoff decision algorithms (VHDA) are, however, too complex and do not consider the restricted access to decision metrics of mobile phones with limited system resources. For addressing this issue and to benefit earlier from seamless service provisioning, we present feasible client based VHDA solutions ensuring context-aware QoS (i.e., high throughput, low power consumption) for specific use cases. Unlike related approaches, our solutions run completely locally on mobile phones without any required modifications on network side. In terms of performance analysis, we design a comprehensive simulation model for comparing the suggested VHDA solutions with different complexity levels. Moreover, we analyze the impact of an energy model, which is derived from experimental measurements, on handoff decision quality and the improvement of battery usage. Simulation results illustrate that VHDAs with energy model enhance the QoS of handoff decisions in terms of high throughput and low power consumption compared to a less approach.

Approaches for optimizing the performance of a mobile SAML-based emergency response system

The fast access of essential and latest information from anytime and anywhere is crucial for the success of fire mission planning and is still a challenge, if requirements such as high performance, security and simplicity have to be met concurrently. However, the secure access to the distributed information of public authorities like building plans or medical patient data is currently mostly available via the traditional time-consuming post. Due to this problem a mobile integrated solution is developed, which allows a secure and holistic access to relevant information. The solution is based on the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) architecture which specifies an XML based standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data. Unfortunately, the performance of this approach is not applicable for time-critical mobile applications because of the SAML specific communication procedures. Thus, this paper presents two approaches for boosting the performance and shows the results of performance evaluation for the required validation. Moreover, an analytic model is introduced for identifying the SAML specific processing time.

Interoperable Role-Based Single Sign-On-Access to Distributed Public Authority Information Systems

The key challenge for Incident Response Organizations is to gather sufficient information about the incident location: In large loss operations information has currently to be requested time-consumingly from different, distributed public authorities. Single-Sign-On Systems are still in progress of devolopment, but all existing systems have the lack of role based access control in common and are based on the functional uncorrelation of their users. In this paper we will present a novel interoperability concept and prototype implementation for a combined Single Sign On (SSO) and Role Based Access Control (RBAC) information system and show its effectiveness through evaluation by implementing it. Just through single operation it will enable the security forces to get shared and simultaneous realtime access to distributed databases of relevant public authorities such as registry offices or building authorities, where table of hydrants, plans of (gas) pipelines or video sequences are available. Beyond the secure system architecture the focus lies on the performance analysis and analytical proof of reliability for our novel mobile information system.

Potential of cooperative information for vertical handover decision algorithms

In the near term, vehicles will be connected with each other and to centralized off-board servers to provide automotive services. In this paper we analyze existing heterogeneous network selection algorithms. It is shown that the developed algorithm for network selection with additional cooperative information is well suited to improve the handover decisions compared to reference handover algorithms without additional cooperative information. The reference algorithms include a received signal strength (RSS), a Fuzzy logic- and an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) based handover decision algorithm excluding supplemental cooperative information. A detailed, simulation based, analysis of the perceived quality of service (QoS) and a cost optimization has been performed for the developed vertical handover decision algorithm (VHDA) using AHP with cooperative information.

A Novel Role- and Certificate-Based Single Sign-On System for Emergency Rescue Operations

In large scale disaster management operations with hundreds and thousands of victims, fast access to distributed heterogeneous information of different organizations is required for efficient and reliable dispensation of rescue operations. The development of such emergency systems poses a big challenge, if requirements such as performance, security and reliability have to be fulfilled simultaneously. In this paper, we propose a novel Role integrated Certificate-based Single Sign-On (RC-SSO) solution for fast mobile access between first responders at the incident scene and their distributed organizations. Beside the illustration of operational details of the RC-SSO solution, we validate our concept by implementing an experimental prototype as proof-of-concept for a limited number of users. Furthermore, we design a simulation model to determine the performance boundary of our solution under high user density. In contrast to other related emergency system solutions, our approach does not employ a so-called Identity Provider (IDP) for authentication and authorization process and thus reduces additional communication cost as well. A comparison of our proposed solution to an IDP based classical single sign-on counterparts i.e. Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) shows that our RC-SSO outperforms these by up to 80%. In addition RC-SSO ensures high data security level with negligible overhead compared to the standard security protocol SSL/TLS.

Secure and Reliable Communication Infrastructure for a Distributed IT-Federation

One of todays major problems is the lack of detailed and current information on the spot for fire brigades and other action forces (e.g. police). However, access to the distributed information (e.g. location maps of fire hydrants, building plans, air photos) is not always available and has to be requested via paper mail in advance. Particularly, preventive fire protection and reactive fire prevention depending on a high-quality information management, which allows them to arrange a more efficient operation. In order to solve this problem, this paper proposes a design of a secure and reliable role based concept, which permits fast access to confidential information. Furthermore, the technical challenge of the development of such a communication infrastructure is illustrated. A performance analysis of an exemplary Monitoring Service for a distributed IT-Federation is introduced, in which an analytical Boolean Reliability Model is presented as an approach to visualize the bottleneck of a decentralized system.

Performance evaluation of feasible and holistic CSH-MU handoff solution for seamless emergency service provisioning

Seamless service provisioning strongly depends on Vertical HandOff (VHO) as key technology that is especially indispensable for the successful management of emergency operations. Latest mobility solutions, including vertical handoff decision algorithms and executions, are related to high technical and economic costs preventing the immediate introduction of VHO technologies. In order to benefit at an earlier stage from seamless emergency services, we present a holistic cost-effective Client based Secure Handoff for Mobile Units (CSH-MU) solution combined with an energy-efficient Vertical Handoff Decision Algorithm (VHDA) that considers the limited system resources of mobile phones (e.g., restricted access to decision metrics, battery life). For performance evaluation and as proof of concept, we develop a comprehensive simulation model and a real experimental test bed to analyze the gain of our energy-efficient decision algorithm for TCP and UDP based applications. For this purpose, the developed energy model is derived from real measurements based on a mobile phone. Confirmed by the results, using the proposed VHDA with energy model enhances the performance in terms of higher throughput and lower power consumption.

Performance evaluation of enhanced CSH-MU solution in a heterogeneous network environment

Fast and secure availability and retrieval of mission critical information for mobile emergency units over a public communication infrastructure is a key factor that determines the mission success during emergency situations. However, the uninterrupted and secure access to public authority databases by the emergency managers, while they are moving towards the scene of incidence in a highly heterogeneous network, is a challenging proposition with imposition of high technical and economical costs. To cater to such a high priority and specialized service application, there is a need to provide an independent IP mobility service framework that would meet the stringent communication requirements of the mobile emergency managers, without requiring any changes/modifications to the existing public communication network infrastructure. With this motivation, we present a novel secure mobility management solution framework called enhanced Client based Secure Handoff for Mobile Units (eCSH-MU), which extends our previously proposed CSH-MU solution. The eCSH-MU solution is a deployable solution, in which the entire mobility functions are managed by the client side, and hence is independent of the underlying network architecture. This paper will provide the operational and functional concept of the eCSH-MU solution and analyze its performance based on a real prototype implementation.