An Efficient and Secure Handover Protocol for IEEE 802.16m Networks

Mobile WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability Microwave Access) requires the re-authentication of mobile stations as they change from one base station to another. IEEE 802.16e uses the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) for authentication and key management. This requires about 1000 ms, therefore, it could not support mobile WiMAX applications such as video conference. In the present paper, we propose a protocol that aims to overcome the inter-domain handover problem. The proposed protocol uses the EAP protocol for authentication and key distribution. The proposed protocol is based on the use of hash functions and the Diffie-Hellman protocol to distribute the keys and to avoid the domino effect. The proposed protocol is analyzed using the BAN logic to ensure that it achieves the goals of authentication and key distribution. Furthermore, the proposed protocol is compared with other handover protocols. The comparison shows that proposed protocol outperforms the other protocols.