Anonymous Handover Mechanism for Service Mobility in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Various handover technologies for heterogeneous wireless networks have been proposed. Most of these technologies are based on mobile IP technology, which reduces the processing time of handovers, network authentication, and service authentication. However, guaranteeing continuity with real-time services and/or video-on-demand services is difficult, particularly when the processing time is reduced by separating the node and network sides. Cooperative processing is therefore needed between the node and network sides or network and service authentication. Moreover, the handover mechanism must provide anonymity to the users of content distribution services. We propose an anonymous handover mechanism and efficient authentication scheme that divides the content key into two data sets and transmits these data sets to the mobile node by way of two paths. We analyze this handover mechanism in this paper.