Re-authentication protocol from WLAN to LTE (ReP WLAN-LTE)

Different wireless technologies have been standardized and commercialized, but none of these technologies is considered the best because each one has its own advantages and disadvantages. For example, Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) offers bit rates surpassing those of Third generation (3G), but is found lacking with respect to roaming, mobility support and lack of sufficient security measures and architecture beyond basic radio access. Hence, inter-working between heterogeneous wireless networks is important to combine their best features and achieve the optimal in wireless communications. Security in inter-working is a major challenge due to the difference of security architectures between these wireless technologies. Therefore, several authentication protocols have been proposed to improve security such as Extensible Authentication Protocol for 3rd generation Authentication and Key Agreement (EAP-AKA) protocol which is used in 3G mobile networks to authenticate to non-cellular networks such as WLANs. In this paper, we analyze threats and attacks of this standard and we propose a re-authentication protocol from WLAN to LTE (ReP WLAN-LTE). This proposed solution allows a mobile connected to a WLAN to migrate to a LTE network. Moreover, it provides perfect forward secrecy to guarantee stronger security, mutual authentication, and resistance to replay attack. Through extensive simulation experiments, we found out that our proposed protocol presents optimal values for handoff latency and satisfactory loss rates, which meet the need for the quality of services.