A secure context management for QoS-aware vertical handovers in 4G networks

Abstract

In the 4G mobile networks which are expected to be very complex systems interconnecting various technologies, new intelligent services will need to be aware of various contexts. In this paper, we present the context management framework that exploits the agent technology in mobile communications and services. We focus mainly on the seamless secure handover which uses context information regarding location privacy, security, network environment, and QoS priority. We designed QoS Broker that can perform the autonomous decision making for context-aware handover without the direct intervention of users. To minimize the signaling overhead, we present an efficient context transfer mechanism among the Brokers. We also designed the context model for the seamless vertical handovers so that the Brokers could ensure the right context is available in the right place at right time. We developed the testbed and analyzed the performance of QoS-aware secure roaming with context transfer. Analytical results show that our context-aware vertical handover provides better performance and security with lower latency. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2005.