Secure media independent handover message transport in heterogeneous networks

  • Authors:

  • Jeong-Jae Won;Murahari Vadapalli;Choong-Ho Cho;Victor C. M. Leung

  • Affiliations:

  • Telecommunication and Network R&D Center, Samsung Electronics Co., LTD., Gyeonggi-do, South Korea;Telecommunication and Network R&D Center, Samsung Electronics Co., LTD., Gyeonggi-do, South Korea;Department of Computer & Information Science, Korea University, South Korea;Department of Electric & Computer Engineering, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

  • Venue:
  • EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking - Special issue on wireless network security
  • Year:
  • 2009

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

The IEEE 802.21 framework for Media Independent Handover (MIH) provides seamless vertical handover support for multimode mobile terminals. MIH messages are exchanged over various wireless media between mobile terminals and access networks to facilitate seamless handover. This calls for the need to secure MIH messages against network security threats in the wireless medium. In this paper, we first analyze IPSec/IKEv2 and DTLS security solution for secure MIH message transport. We show that handover latency can be an impediment to the use of IPSec and DTLS solutions. To overcome the handover overhead and hence minimize authentication time, a new secure MIH message transport solution, referred as MIHSec in this paper, is proposed. Experimental results are obtained for MIH between WLAN and Ethernet networks and the impacts of MIH message security on the handover latency are evaluated for IPSec, DTLS, and MIHSec security solutions. The effectiveness of MIHSec is demonstrated.