Secure and efficient handover schemes for heterogeneous networks

Abstract

With the rapid development of wireless communication, mobile users are able to manually switch their network interfaces to different types of networks. The IEEE 802.21 Draft Standard was proposed to integrate the Media Independent Handover (MIHs) between the wireless network interfaces, such as WiFi, WiMAX, 3GPP, and 3GPP2. However, it may not hold the seamless roaming character and does not provide the security mechanism. In this paper, we propose an efficient handover mechanism among WiFi and WiMAX networks to meet the seamless roaming character by reducing the authentication processes. In addition, the proposed scheme involves security mechanisms that guarantee the handover messages to be secure and maintain the authenticity for the reduced steps.