Credit-Based User Authentication for Delay Tolerant Mobile Wireless Networks

Abstract

Wireless Internet has become increasingly popular due to anywhere anytime access feature. The Internet architecture was designed underlying the existing of the end-to-end path connection. The promise of wireless Internet networks is to provide roaming users connectivity anywhere anytime. However, quality of service (QoS) is still an open issue in wireless networks, which are characterized by possible intermittent connectivity and large transmission delays, due to user mobility, sparse mobile node distribution, link failures (because of hostile propagation medium), and/or other high-priority traffc. In this thesis, a credit-based user authentication scheme is proposed for delay tolerant mobile wireless networks. The proposed authentication scheme isolates the uncertain network condition in the high delay wireless backhaul with high error rate, and accelerates the overall authentication process when the mobile terminal roams in the visited network. Furthermore, an analytical study of overall network performance is presented for the authentication scheme in terms of authentication cost and delay. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed credit-based authentication scheme reduces the overall real time transaction cost and delay for delay tolerant mobile wireless networks.