Flexible Authentication Technique for Ubiquitous Wireless Communication using Passport and Visa Tokens

Abstract

The development of mobile devices (CPU, memory, and storage) and the introduction of mobile networks (Ad-Hoc, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and 3.5G) have opened new opportunities for next generation of mobile services. It becomes more convenience and desirable for mobile internet users to be connected everywhere. However, ubiquitous mobile access connectivity faces interoperation issues between wireless network providers and wireless network technologies. Although mobile users would like to get as many services as possible while they travel, there is a lack of technology to identify visited users in current foreign network authentication systems. This challenge lies in the fact that a foreign network provider does not initially have the authentication credentials of a mobile user. Existing approaches use roaming agreement to exchange authentication information between home network and foreign network. This paper proposes a roaming agreement-less approach designed based on our ubiquitous mobile access model. Our approach consist of two tokens, Passport (identification token) and Visa (authorisation token) to provide the mobile user with a flexible authentication method to access foreign network services. The security analysis indicates that our proposal is more suitable for ubiquitous mobile communication especially in roaming agreement-less environment.