Using Concurrently Executing Mechanism to Provide Secure Handoff Optimization for IPv6-Based Wireless Networks

A secure and effective handoff scheme is the key to guarantee seamless roaming of mobile terminals in all IP heterogeneous wireless networks. In the current work, Fast handoffs for mobile IPv6 (FMIPv6) can reduce the handoff latency, but the process of registration update badly affects the handoff efficiency, and it doesn´t think of the necessary secure function when handoff across heterogeneous networks and different management domains. This paper proposes a FMIPv6-based concurrently executing handoff method-CE-FMIPv6, which integrates Wireless Shared Key Exchange (W-SKE) into FMIPv6 and substitutes previous access router (PAR) for mobile node to complete the registration update process. With the assistant of PAR, the mutual authentication, registration update and layer 2 handoff are executed simultaneously, and the handoff delay caused by registration update and authentication is improved evidently. This method also takes account of the fast re-authentication process to improve the handoff efficiency of micro-mobility. The theoretical analysis indicates that this method could reach a good compromise between security and handoff efficiency.