Security and mobility architecture for isolated wireless networks using WIMAX as an infrastructure

The main aim of the paper is to define a security and mobility architecture for users to roam along isolated wireless networks. Due to the mobility of the users as well as the networks some of the key issues like security and mobility management are not addressed properly due to non availability of infrastructure to handle authentications, mobility management in the access networks. To provide services in a isolated areas, and to cover large areas the ideal solution is provided by the cellular networks, but the bandwidth, cost of communication and the availability for different services are limited by the cellular networks. For this purpose we propose to integrate WIMAX (IEEE 802.16) based networks working in a mesh configuration with WLAN (IEEE 802.11) as a solution to provide different services. By this method a centralized system is proposed to process authentication and mobility management in the network for the users as well as access networks. In the proposed architecture, a master node acts as a gateway for mesh and slave nodes. The gateway has an AAA server which acts as an authentication and accounting server for the mesh nodes. WLAN are interconnected to mesh nodes and slave nodes and the users use WLAN as an access network. The user authenticates to the network using EAP or a onetime password method to access the services in the network. We also proposed mobility management in the architecture where users roams along different access networks in an efficient manner. We evaluated the architecture using a testbed, we calculated the time of authentications and re-authentications during roaming, delay at the user level while networks are in mobile mode.