Secure transparent mobile IP for intelligent transportation systems

In this paper we discuss the issues of wireless mobile networks for intelligent transportation systems (ITS) and examine several available technologies. Furthermore, we propose a design of secure transparent mobile IP to provide broadband ITS services over wireless LAN that improves upon security, transparency and handoff of mobile IP. The proposed design adopts a tunnel-in-tunnel mechanism for secure mobile network systems. It includes a direct registration method to support transparent registration and fast handoff, and a VPN-based access control to provide secure user roaming and traffic protection. Single sign-on is also developed to keep authenticated VPN sessions and mobile nodes connected even the attachment to Internet has changed. The protocol analysis and the preliminary experiment show that our design not only supports transparency and security for mobile IP, but it also significantly reduce both the latency and the number of control messages incurred by handoff.