Fast authentication for mobility support in wireless mesh networks

We propose new authentication protocols that support fast hand-off for real-time applications such as voice over IP and audio/video conferencing in wireless mesh networks (WMNs). A client and a mesh access point (MAP) mutually authenticate each other using one-hop communications. The central authentication server is not involved during the handover process. Fast authentication for roaming from one MAP to another is supported by using tickets. Our performance analysis, simulation results and security analysis show that our proposed authentication protocols are efficient and resilient to various kinds of attacks.