Formal Verification of the Coordinated Robust Authentication Protocol for Wireless Networks

Abstract

Today we are moving towards a Post-PC era where people prefer to use hand held devices such as tablets or smart phones to maintain their presence in the E-communication world. Most of this communication is possible because of technologies such as Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), WiMAX or LTE etc. Although the wireless hand held devices are capable of effectively connecting with their native network they often fail to maintain robust connectivity in unfamiliar networks. Therefore the need for collaborative and complementary usage has to be explored. With the range of approaches that are used to validate the mobile devices in heterogeneous wireless networks, the need for a user friendly, flexible and reliable method to interconnect and utilize the different classes of wireless networks is becoming inevitable. Wireless network users prefer to access different types of networks either independently or cooperatively. In either case, adequate security provision is critical to the successful operation of the networks. Moreover, emerging technologies should provide seamless migration between the varied networks. Hence the ability to use a single but unique set of credentials to authenticate the wireless devices in heterogeneous wireless networks would make the post-PC era more effective. In this paper we present details of the formal analysis carried out on our proposed coordinated robust authentication (CRA) protocol.