Secure and Privacy-Preserving Authentication Protocols for Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have emerged as a promising concept to meet the challenges in next-generation wireless networks such as providing flexible, adaptive, and reconfigurable architecture while offering cost-effective solutions to service providers (Akyildiz et al., 2005). WMNs are multi-hop networks consisting of mesh routers (MRs), which form wireless mesh backbones and mesh clients (MCs). The mesh routers provide a rich radio mesh connectivity which significantly reduces the up-front deployment cost of the network. Mesh routers are typically stationary and do not have power constraints. However, the clients are mobile and energy-constrained. Some mesh routers are designated as gateway routers which are connected to the Internet through a wired backbone. A gateway router provides access to conventional clients and interconnects ad hoc, sensor, cellular, and other networks to the Internet. The gateway routers are also referred to as the Internet gateways (IGWs). A mesh network can provide multi-hop communication paths between wireless clients, thereby serving as a community network, or can provide multi-hop paths between the client and the gateway router, thereby providing broadband Internet access to the clients.