Quantum Cryptography for Wireless Network Communications

It is well known that wireless networks have become one of the most important part used communication systems, in particular for ubiquitous computing. However, providing secure communication for wireless networks has become one of the prime concerns. Quantum cryptography, namely quantum key distribution (QKD), offers the promise of unconditional security. In this paper, we shall extend our previous research work to a new method of integrating quantum cryptography for key distribution in 802.11 wireless networks. Our contributions, based on our previous results [1], are as follows: (a) We shall show how QKD can be used in IEEE 802.11 wireless networks to securely distribute the keys. (b) We shall introduce a method that take the advantage of mutual authentication features offered by some EAP variants of 802.1X port-based network access control. (c) finally, we present a new code called quantum message integrity code (Q-MIC) which provides mutual authentication between the two communication parties and its implementation.