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Journal of Information Science and Engineering, Vol. 26 No. 4, pp. 1345-1362

Fast Handoff among IEEE 802.11r Mobility Domains

KUANG-HUI CHI, CHIEN-CHAO TSENG⁺ AND YA-HSUAN TSAI⁺
Department of Electrical Engineering
National Yunlin University of Science and Technology
Touliu, 640 Taiwan
E-mail: chikh@yuntech.edu.tw
⁺Institute of Computer Science and Engineering
National Chiao Tung University
Hsinchu, 300 Taiwan
E-mail: {cctseng; yhtsai}@csie.nctu.edu.tw

This paper deals with secure fast handoff among access points (APs) of different IEEE 802.11r mobility domains. We leverage standard IEEE 802.11i mechanisms to let a station preauthenticate and establish a pairwise transient key with some target AP beforehand. Upon reassociation, the new AP aware of the preauthenticated station can thus complete handoff sooner than would otherwise be required. In order to resolve target APs timely, we introduce a location server that maintains network topology of an autonomous system covering multiple mobility domains. The location server assesses with which AP(s) the mobile station may reassociate next using its migration tendency. Accordingly the station is instructed to preauthenticate with fewer potential next APs than unnecessary. Performance discussions indicate that our proposal is effective in practice. Our approach is not only complementary to emerging IEEE 802.11r-based techniques but also useful to any network-layer fast handoff schemes for streamlined communication.

Keywords: wireless local area network, fast handoff, preauthentication, IEEE 802.11r, IEEE 802.11i

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