Comments and improvements of "HOTA: Handover optimized ticket-based authentication in network-based mobility management"

Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6), a network-based mobility management protocol, has clearly different perceptions compared with host-based mobility management protocols. In PMIPv6, a mobile node (MN) is not involved in any mobility signaling as mobility service provisioning entities provide mobility services for the MN. This characteristic leads us to develop a new handover authentication scheme that satisfies certain security and performance requirements. In this paper, handover optimized ticket-based authentication (HOTA) is developed to enable an MN to securely reuse a credential issued by an authentication server (AS) when the MN performs handover authentication over different access networks. The proposed secure reuse of the credential reduces the handover latency while it simplifies a handover authentication procedure. Initial authentication and handover authentication procedures of HOTA are presented in detail and analyzed with a formal authentication analysis method, BAN Logic. Analytical models are also developed to evaluate the authentication and handover latencies, packet loss, and handover failure probability. The conducted numerical analysis corroborates that HOTA outperforms previously developed handover authentication schemes for PMIPv6. 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.