An efficient design and validation technique for secure handover between 3GPP LTE and WLANs systems

Abstract

Future generations wireless systems, which integrate different wireless access networks together, will support a secured seamless mobility and a wide variety of applications and services with different quality of service (QoS) requirements. Most of the existing re-authentication protocols during vertical handover still have certain limitations such as man in the middle, eavesdropping and session hijacking attacks, and unacceptable delay for real time applications. In this article, we propose two re-authentication schemes to secure handover between 3GPP LTE and WLANs systems: Initial Handover Re-authentication Protocol, and Local Re-authentication Protocol. The second proposed protocol is executed locally in a WLAN network without contacting the authentication server of the home network for credentials verification. In fact, after a successful execution of the Initial Handover Re-authentication Protocol, the local key (LK) is shared between USIM and the authentication server of the WLAN. It is then used for securing handover and traffic in WLAN networks. Performance evaluation results obtained using simulation analysis show that the proposed re-authentication protocol enhances handover parameters such as handover latency, handover blocking rate and packet loss rate. Additionally, the proposed enhanced fast re-authentication protocol has been modeled and verified using the software AVISPA and is found to be safe.