A Novel Channel Probing/Scanning Scheme for Secure Fast Handoff in IEEE 802.11-Based Wireless Networks

With the proliferation of wireless networks for practical deployments in recent years, secure fast handoff has become significantly important to provide secured access while reduce the latency caused by handoff procedure. Channel probing/scanning delay has been a major contribution to the overall latency of handoff in IEEE 802.11 based wireless networks. In this paper, we present a novel secure fast handoff scheme that adopts network-assisted radio statement (NACS) to eliminate lengthy probing/scanning delay by taking advantage of the knowledge of network topology of neighboring nodes in the network. We apply an opportunistic mechanism to retrieve the channel condition from neighboring nodes close enough to reduce the scanning/probing delay while providing secure wireless access for the handoff candidate node. In this manner, it can reduce the channel probing/scanning delay and achieve secure handoff. We show analysis and simulation results to verify the performance of the proposed secure fast handoff scheme.