Fast Authentication Based on Heuristic Movement Prediction for Seamless Handover in Wireless Access Environment

With the explosive proliferation of WLANs (wireless local area networks), their inter-working with other existing wireless mobile networks, such as 3G cellular networks, is being actively promoted by carriers to achieve ubiquitous broadband communication. Fast authentication is essential to achieve seamless handover in such an environment. Existing fast authentication proposals are too complicated to be easily deployed in the current commercial WLAN service. Therefore, we introduce three proposals: a heuristic movement prediction algorithm based on existing service logs, a simple area-based pre-authentication method, and a temporary authentication scheme. With these proposals, we can provide a seamless communication environment that consists of currently deployed cellular networks, public WLAN networks, and other kinds of wireless access networks.