Secure Handover Procedures in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Ulrike Meyer
Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany

Monday, March 8 2004, 2:00PM
Lieb 120
Computer Science Department
Stevens Institute of Technology
 

Abstract


In wireless networks like UMTS or WLAN a mobile station is connected to a point of network access over a radio link. A handover is a mechanism by which an ongoing connection between a mobile station and a correspondent node is transfered from one point of network access to an other. If the two points of access use different networking technologies, the hanodver is called vertical or heterogeneous, else horizontal or homogeneous. In the ideal case the user and the corresponding node do not realize any disruption of their connection during a handover.

When a session of a mobile station is handed over from one point of network access to an other, a secure channel with the new access point has to be established. Thus authentication and key agreement have to be integrated into handover procedures.

In this talk different methods to integrate authentication and key agreement in handover procedures are motivated and discussed. The methods used in the current mobile telephony and wireless local area network standards are described and their shortcomings are pointed out. Thereafter some new ideas to solve the problem are presented. The talk will end with a listing of open problems.