Abstract
The future model of wireless networks is the coexistence of current existing access networks. The different access networks managed by different operators will be bound together into a single network with the Internet Protocol as the glue. To fulfil this vision, one of the most challenging parts is to facilitate the authentication phase of the handovers between domains. Such a movement suffers from limited resources such as limited bandwidth and high latency. One way of utilising the wireless resources efficiently is by transferring the context that is required to authenticate the user in a new visited domain of the running session instead of establishing the connection from scratch. Due to the user\'s movement, however, the available time to complete this handover might be too short.
This thesis proposes a novel way to authenticate a mobile node without the necessity to communicate with the home domain while maintaining a high level of security. The text provides a detailed discussion of the method and demonstrates the improvement to related approaches. The involved protocols have been modelled by utilising the Unified Modelling Language (UML) in order to specify, analyse and validate the developed scheme.
Subsequently, analytical modelling has been developed to investigate the handover performance of the existing approaches compared with the one proposed in this thesis. The simulation of the authentication process shows the relation between authentication performance and traffic intensity. Finally, the approach is modelled by Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols Tool (AVISPA) whereby formal security verification is performed and checked.