Efficient Authentication Schemes for Handover in Mobile WiMAX

Mobile WiMAX is the next generation of broadband wireless network. It allows users to roam over the network under vehicular speeds. However, when a mobile station changes from one base station to another, it should be authenticated again. This may lead to delay in communication, especially for real-time applications, such as VoIP and Pay-TV systems. In this paper, we propose two efficient schemes to enhance the performance of authentication during handover in mobile WiMAX. The first scheme adopts, instead of the standard EAP method used in handover authentication, an efficient shared key-based EAP method. The second one, skips the standard EAP method, does the authentication in SA-TEK three-way handshake in PKMv2 process. In addition, the security proofs of our schemes are provided in this paper.