A Dual Re-Authentication Scheme for Fast Handoff in IEEE 802.11 Wireless Mesh Networks

Re-authentication delay is a major concern of fast handoff in wireless mesh networks. Most recent efforts focus on proactive approaches by transferring security context to potential target mesh routers before handoff occurs. However, the efficiency and effectiveness of such approaches are significantly affected by the density of potential targets and the accuracy of handoff prediction which is in fact a very difficult task. In this paper, we propose a reactive scheme to reduce re-authentication delay with low communication overhead in IEEE 802.11 wireless mesh network. Our proposed scheme consists of two steps: Immediate Authentication (lA) and Full Authentication (FA) to exploit the tradeoff between system performance and security. Numerical results show our proposed scheme can reduce re-authentication delay by as much as 51.9% within the sacrifice of the degradation of security 6.04%.