The Iterative Distributed Re-authentication Scheme Based on EAP-AKA in 3G/UMTS-WLAN Heterogeneous Mobile Networks

3G/UMTS-WLAN heterogeneous mobile network is a complementary platform for the trend of Beyond-3G (B3G) wireless data communications. However, the design of a securing authentication protocol in 3G/UMTS-WLAN heterogeneous mobile networks is a challenging task. Even though EAP authentication and key agreement protocol (EAP-AKA) is adopted by 3rd generation partnership protocol (3GPP) to achieve authentication and security services in 3G/UMTS-WLAN interworking networks, it suffers a main drawback that is high re-authentication delay due to centralized re-authentication sessions within the RADIUS server and unnecessary multiple rounds of challenge-response messages traveling between the RADIUS server and UEs. In this paper, the iterative distributed re-authentication scheme is proposed to substitute for the fast re-authentication in EAP-AKA, and iterative process and distributed process within access points (APs) are introduced for reducing re-authentication latency. Also, the simulation model based on Network Simulator 2 (NS-2) is used to provide a proof-of-concept implementation in authentication session time, and the simulation results show that the reduction of authentication session time in the proposed scheme reaches up to 84.4% and 71.2% comparing to the full authentication scheme and the fast re-authentication scheme, respectively.