Seamless Roaming Research Articles

4G Wireless Networks

One such development is fourth generation networks. Also called future generation or Next Generation Networks. The introduction of 4G has widened the scope of mobile communication. Now mobile is not only a device used for talking but its more or less a portable computer that can serve different purposes. 4G offers higher data rates with seamless roaming. The mobile user can communicate without any disturbance while switching his coverage network. 4G is still passing through research and therefore there are some problems that need to be fixed in order to benefit the users from it fully. In this report we discuss various challenges 4G is facing and solutions to those problems are discussed. We propose our own way of improving QoS in 4G by using combination of mobility protocol SMIP and SIP Keywords: 4G Wireless Networks,

Mobile-Chain: Secure blockchain based decentralized authentication system for global roaming in mobility networks

Designing a secure and efficient authentication protocol is crucial and challenging in the mobility network. Due to the seamless roaming of mobile users over multiple foreign agents and the broadcast nature of the communication channel, the mobile networks are often exposed to several network attacks. To achieve perfect authentication and secure communication among mobility entities like MU (Mobile User), FA (Foreign Agent) and HA (Home Agent), the researchers have proposed numerous authentication protocols in the past. However, the existing protocols for the mobility environments are insufficient to address the fundamental security concerns and an adversary can impersonate the mobile user at anytime. Thus, we propose Mobile-Chain, a secure blockchain-based authentication system for mobility environments. The proposed Mobile-Chain is designed to protect user privacy and guarantees provable security like authentication, anonymity, untraceability, confidentiality, data integrity, and decentralization. The implementation of the security framework has been done on the ethereum blockchain platform using smart contracts written in a solidity programming language. The security analysis reveals that Mobile-Chain is robust against various security threats to which mobility networks are vulnerable. Besides, the authentication framework has been measured through a formal security verification tool known as Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocol and Application (AVISPA). Notably, the performance evaluation of the proposed protocol proves that it maintains performance gain, computationally efficient, and implementable in resource-limited wireless and mobility environments.

AFSOS: An Auction Framework and Stackelberg Game Oriented Optimal Network’s Resource Selection Technique in Cognitive Radio Networks

The upcoming 5G and beyond wireless networking technologies are intended to coexist with different communication networks to solve the spectrum scarcity problem. The seamless roaming across integrated wireless networks and an optimal network’s resource allocation would be a doable challenge for designing futuristic networks. The cognitive radio (CR) networks, with the inclusion of game theory, can handle spectrum scarcity issues by permitting spectrum access to the secondary user (SU) in the absence of a primary user (PU). This work proposes an AFSOS (an Auction Framework and Stackelberg game oriented Optimal network’s resource Selection) technique to achieve a maximum payoff and acceptable interference power restraint in CR networks. The contest among candidate networks can be modeled as a Stackelberg game, and the contest between CR nodes and candidate networks can be modeled as an auction framework. As a schema for the realization and capabilities evaluations, the CR networks consisting of LTE cellular network interworking with Wi-Fi network for multiple access points (APs)/single vehicle (low traffic environment) is analyzed. This framework is further analyzed for single AP/multiple CR nodes (high traffic environment). The equilibrium for the Stackelberg game is achieved, and the proposed AFSOS technique is analyzed with numerical examples. The results show that the proposed AFSOS technique is more operative to obtain maximum payoff.

HYBRID COMMUNICATION NETWORK FOR THE PURPOSE OF MARITIME APPLICA TIONS

The article presents the concept of the hybrid communication system for the purpose of maritime applications. The main idea of this system is that it will utilize the seamless roaming concept, which means the communication link at sea will be established automatically (and seamlessly for the user), using many possible communication techniques (cellular, LTE, Wi-Fi, VDES, etc.) which will be selected depending on the current conditions of the radio channel and the requirements and preferences of the user. The paper will introduce the general architecture of the system, the concept of the maritime cloud and the seamless roaming, including the way the latter will be implemented in the system. The authors will also briefly introduce the proposed test-bed of the system’s on-board device. The system presented in the article is one of the major topics of the EfficienSea 2 project (co-funded from the ‘Horizon 2020’ programme) in which the authors of the paper participate.

5G Beyond 3GPP Release 15 for Connected Automated Mobility in Cross-Border Contexts.

Fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks aim to be qualified as the core connectivity infrastructures to address connected automated mobility (CAM), both from a technological and from a business perspective, for the higher automation levels defined by the automotive industry. Specifically, in some territories such as the European Union the cross-border corridors have relevance, as they are the cohesive paths for terrestrial transport. Therefore, 5G for CAM applications is planned to be deployed there first. However, cross-border contexts imply paramount communication challenges, such as seamless roaming, not addressed by current technology. This paper identifies relevant future 5G enhancements, specifically those specified by Third-Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) releases beyond Release 15, and outlines how they will support the ambitions of highly automated driving in cross-border corridors. In order to conduct this study, a set of representative use cases and the related communication requirements were identified. Then, for each use case, the most relevant 5G features were proposed. Some open issues are described at the end.

AI and Blockchain Integrated Billing Architecture for Charging the Roaming Electric Vehicles

Due to the proliferation of extended travel range electric vehicles (EVs), these will travel through different networks that might be served by different utility companies. Therefore, we propose an architecture capable of offering a charging service to roaming vehicles. Furthermore, although the energy internet supports both the flow of energy and information, it does not support seamless EV roaming service, because it is based on a centralized architecture. The blockchain technology that is based on a decentralized system has the potential to support a secure billing platform for charging the EVs roaming through different electrical jurisdictions. Furthermore, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) ensures that the participating players get a fair portion of the revenue. Thus, the objective of this paper is to develop an AI and blockchain integrated billing architecture that would offer a charging service to the “roaming” EVs and present a fair and unified billing solution.

Blockchain and SDN Architecture for Spectrum Management in Cellular Networks

Whereas 4G LTE networks have brought about an increase in data rates of mobile networks, they are unable to meet the capacity demands of future networks. Specifically, the centralized nature of the evolved packet core (EPC) makes the network non-scalable to match the exponential increase in number of wireless devices in addition to the complexities of diverse service requirements. The SDN concept has recently attracted a lot of research interest as a viable proposition for bringing about programmability and ease of network management while also offering flexibility for innovative network designs. However, current SDN implementations are not adapted to support business agreements that foster interoperability among mobile network operators (MNOs). This paper is an extended version of our earlier work and we intend to present a unified SDN and blockchain architecture with enhanced spectrum management features for enabling seamless user roaming capabilities between MNOs. Our simulation results show that users can experience no disruption in service with very minimal delay as they traverse between operators.

Design of a USIM and ECC based handover authentication scheme for 5G-WLAN heterogeneous networks

A variety of wireless communication technologies have been developed to provide services to a large number of users. The future integrated 5G-WLAN wireless networks will support seamless and secure roaming, and various types of real-time applications and services, which will be the trend of next-generation computing paradigm. In this paper, we discuss the privacy and security problems in 5G-WLAN heterogeneous networks and present a logical 5G-WLAN integrated architecture. We also propose a novel USIM and ECC based design of handover authentication for next-generation 5G-WLAN heterogeneous networks that can provide secure and seamless Internet connectivity. Our scheme has the features of strong security and better performance in terms of computation cost, energy cost, and storage cost as compared with the state-of-the-art schemes.

SERO: A Model-Driven Seamless Roaming Framework for Wireless Mesh Network With Multipath TCP

While modern wireless devices are capable of using multiple WiFi interfaces, the Multipath TCP (MPTCP) protocol has been employed to make full use of the capacity of many radios by enabling multiple path communication simultaneously. To provide exceptional mobility support in wireless networks, a key question is to determine the best handoff strategy to switch between access points or among WiFi/3G interfaces during roaming. In this paper, we propose SERO, a novel model-driven SEamless ROaming framework to optimize layer-2 handoff and vertical handoff for multihomed devices using MPTCP. The proposed framework adopts a measurement-based method to derive the TCP throughput model for wireless communication during handoff. Based on the throughput model, we propose a hybrid handoff strategy that uses multiple WiFi interfaces for data transmission and employs 3G augmentation to bridge the network interruption caused by handoff and to guarantee the total throughput above a predefined threshold for roaming devices. We implement the SERO framework in a real-deployed wireless mesh network testbed, and evaluate its performance by extensive experiments, which shows that SERO achieves performance gain of 26%-180% compared with several existing handoff strategies.

Anonymous roaming authentication protocol for wireless network with backward unlinkability, exculpability and efficient revocation check

Secure seamless roaming in a wireless network is desirable in today’s highly dynamic world. Providing revocation and non-traceability in an efficient two-party roaming authentication protocol is a challenging task. Conventional two-party protocols utilize pseudo-identities or group signature with revocation tokens to support non-traceability and strong user anonymity. Among the group signature based authentication schemes, only Priauth scheme has non-traceability or backward/forward unlinkability and the mobile user does not have to do any computation after each revocation. Despite all the advantages, Priauth scheme does not support exculpability or in other words the home server knows the group signing key of the mobile user. In case of dispute, the mobile user can deny that it generated signature because the mobile user and the home server both know the signing key of the mobile user. Thus, the mobile user cannot be held accountable. Moreover, Priauth has high revocation cost due to pairing operation performed for each revoked token in the revocation list during revocation checking at the foreign server. In addition, the existing group signature based authentication schemes are not provably secure in the random oracle model. We propose a provably secure two-party authentication protocol using group signature scheme which overcomes the weaknesses of Priauth scheme by supporting exculpability, backward unlinkability and using exponential operation instead of costlier pairing operation during revocation checking.

Seamless roaming and guaranteed communication using a synchronized single-hop multi-gateway 802.15.4e TSCH network

Industrial wireless sensor and actuator networks (WSANs) are being used to improve the efficiency, productivity and safety of industrial processes. One open standard that is commonly used in such cases is IEEE 802.15.4e. Its Time-Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) mode employs a time synchronized based medium access control (MAC) scheme together with channel hopping to alleviate the impact of channel fading and interference. Until now, most of the industrial WSANs have been designed to only support static nodes and are not able to deal with mobility. In this paper, we show how a single-hop, multi-gateway IEEE 802.15.4e TSCH network architecture can tackle the mobility problem. We introduce the Virtual Grand Master (VGM) concept that moves the synchronization point from separated Backbone Border Routers (BBRs) towards the backbone network. With time synchronization of all BBRs, mobile nodes can roam from one BBR to another without time desynchronization. In addition to time synchronization, we introduce a mechanism to synchronize the schedules between BBRs to support fast handover of mobile nodes. We show that with the proposed network architecture handovers happen instantly without any packet losses, while the handover time can be up to tens of seconds without any time synchronization between BBRs. The solution is evaluated in a testbed setting as well as in a real industrial environment.

WAP Based Seamless Roaming In Urban Environment with Wise Handoff Technique

WAP Based Seamless Roaming In Urban Environment with Wise Handoff Technique

Exploiting Hotspot-2.0 for Traffic Offloading in Mobile Networks

WiFi networks can offload data traffic from congested cellular networks in a cost-effective way. However, it is difficult to perform WiFi offloading in mobile environments due to the complicated and time consuming access procedure of WiFi networks. In this article, we first investigate mobile traffic offloading by leveraging the HS-2.0 technique, which greatly simplifies the access procedure and provides a novel signaling diagram to enable automatic association and seamless roaming for mobile users. We then compare the legacy HS-1.0 with HS-2.0, and study the impacts of HS-2.0 on mobile traffic offloading by considering the pedestrian case and the drive-thru Internet case, respectively. We develop an HS-2.0 traffic offloading prototype and provide useful results through empirical measurements. Finally, we show the research issues for HS-2.0 mobile traffic offloading.

Vertical Handover Decision Schemes in Fourth Generation Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

Vertical Handover Decision (VHD) algorithms are indispensable components of forthcoming 4G heterogeneous wireless networks architecture – so as to provide requisite Quality of Service to an assortment of applications anywhere at any time, while allowing seamless roaming in highly dynamic scenarios (i.e. multitude of access network technologies that vary in bandwidth, latency, monetary cost, etc.) using Mobile Terminals (MTs) enabled with multiple access interfaces. In this article, a critical review of the existing VHD algorithms has been carried out as an effort to update the previous studies. To offer a methodical contrast, recently published VHD algorithms have been classified into four major classes depending on the key handover decision criterion used, i.e. RSS based algorithms, bandwidth based algorithms, cost function based algorithms, and the combination algorithms. Moreover, operational fundamentals, advantages, and disadvantages of exemplary VHD algorithms for each class have been presented to assess the tradeoffs between their intricacy of implementation and the efficacy.

A secure and privacy-preserving lightweight authentication protocol for wireless communications

ABSTRACTIn wireless networks, seamless roaming allows a mobile user (MU) to utilize its services through a foreign server (FS) when outside his home server (HS). However, security and efficiency of the authentication protocol as well as privacy of MUs are of great concern to achieve an efficient authentication protocol. Conventionally, authentication involves the participation of three entities (MU, HS, and FS); however, involving an HS in the authentication process incurs heavy computational burden on it due to huge amount of roaming requests. Moreover, wireless networks are often susceptible to various forms of passive and active attacks. Similarly, mobile devices have low processing, communication, and power capabilities.In this paper, we propose an efficient, secure, and privacy-preserving lightweight authentication protocol for roaming MUs in wireless networks without engaging an HS. The proposed authentication protocol uses unlinkable pseudo-IDs and lightweight time-bound group signature to provide strong user anonymity, and a cost-effective cryptographic scheme to achieve security of the authentication protocol. Similarly, we implement a better billing system for MUs and a computationally efficient revocation scheme. Our analysis shows that the protocol has better performance than other related authentication protocols in wireless communications in terms of security, privacy, and efficiency.

Intelligent vertical handoff decision strategy based on network performance prediction and consumer surplus value for next generation wireless networks

Vertical handoff (VHO) decision services play an essential role in the current wireless networks. Many algorithms designed aim at quality of service while granting seamless roaming amongst a number of heterogeneous access networks. In this study, the authors proposed an intelligent VHO decision strategy targeting to maximise user satisfaction without compromising on quality of service for non-real time mobile based services. The proposed strategy applies consumer surplus value (CSV)-based pricing scheme and also a prediction system to approximate network performances at various intervals. Finally, a fuzzy rule-based behavioral system is proposed to find optimal network by considering both CSV as well as network performance as stimulus parameters. Simulation is carried out using OM Net++ and MATLAB, and the results are acknowledged with discussion and analysis.

Hybrid Communication Network for the Purpose of Maritime Applications - Technical Note

Technical Notes - The article presents the concept of the hybrid communication system for the purpose of maritime applications. The main idea of this system is that it will utilize the seamless roaming concept, which means the communication link at sea will be established automatically (and seamlessly for the user), using many possible communication techniques (cellular, LTE, Wi-Fi, VDES, etc.) which will be selected depending on the current conditions of the radio channel and the requirements and preferences of the user. The paper will introduce the general architecture of the system, the concept of the maritime cloud and the seamless roaming, including the way the latter will be implemented in the system. The authors will also briefly introduce the proposed test-bed of the system’s on-board device. The system presented in the article is one of the major topics of the EfficienSea 2 project (co-funded from the ‘Horizon 2020’ programme) in which the authors of the paper participate.

Navigation-driven handoff minimization in wireless networks

Interactive wireless Internet applications (e.g. VoIP over wireless networks, realtime monitoring and some mobile-cloud offloading applications) desire high-quality links and smooth connectivity during movement. In order to support seamless roaming in wireless networks, handoff optimization constantly attracted a lot of attentions. Most existing approaches aim at reducing handoff latency by modifying the communication and association protocols. While these methods provide significant savings in handoff latency, frequent handoffs could still be crucial and problematic for interactive applications. In this paper, we propose a new method for handoff optimization by introducing navigation to minimize the handoff frequency. We first formulate the navigation-driven handoff minimization problem in general case, then propose an optimal algorithm to the scenario of global knowledge, a heuristic localized algorithm for scenario of local knowledge, and a measurement-based algorithm for scenario of real communication settings. Implementation issues of the proposed algorithms are discussed and simulations based on real world AP deployment are used to evaluate their performance. Experiment results show that our algorithms reduce handoff frequency by 23% in average, compared to existing strategies. Extensive experiments of the impact of the high-layer QoS performance are also conducted to prove the effectiveness of our work.

Statistical Quality of Service to Increase Qos/Qoe of IP-Based Gateway for Integrating Heterogeneous Wireless Devices

In broadcast service area above communications supported cellular wireless networks, data is communicated to several addressees from a right of entry point/base station. Multicast significantly progresses the network effectiveness to dispense data to multiple addressees as associated to multiple unicast gatherings of the similar data to each receiver independently, by taking improvement of the communal nature of the wireless intermediate. These algorithms need to be intended to be responsible for the essential Quality of Service (QoS) towards an extensive assortment of applications while permitting seamless roaming between multitudes of access network technologies. This paper proposed a cellular-aided mobile ad hoc network (CAMA) structural design, in which a CAMA representative in the cellular network accomplishes the control data, while the data is transported over the mobile terminals (MTs). The routing and security info is substituted among MTs and the negotiator over cellular radio channels. A location centered routing protocol, the multi-selection greedy positioning routing (MSGPR) protocol, is projected. This novel feature makes it more appropriate in the actual world. In accumulation, dynamic new call blocking possibility is initially familiarized to make handoff decision for wireless networks. This paper proposes a novel technique to afford QoS sustenance by means of an assistant network to recuperate the failure of multicast data in the major network. A wireless device might misplace some of the multicast records send above the major network. The experiment results have exposed that the proposed algorithm outclasses traditional algorithms in bandwidth deployment, handoff dropping rate and handoff rate.

A Robust and Efficient Privacy Aware Handover Authentication Scheme for Wireless Networks

A handover authentication protocol ensures secure and seamless roaming over multiple access points. A number of such protocols are proposed, but most of these protocols are inefficient or insecure. Very recently, Li et al. (Wireless Pers Commun 80(2):581---589, 2015) proposed a privacy-aware handover authentication protocol, and claimed their protocol to be more lightweight and secure than existing protocols. However, our analysis identifies that Li et al.'s protocol is insecure against access point impersonation attack. As a remedy, we proposed an improved protocol to fix the security weakness of Li et al.'s protocol. The improved protocol achieves the provable security in the random oracle model against the hardness assumptions of the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem and elliptic curve computational Diffie---Hellman problem. The proposed handover authentication protocol is also formally analyzed with the automated tool ProVerif. The improved protocol not only enhances the security but is more lightweight than other related protocols.