Secure and Efficient Handover Schemes for WiMAX over EPON networks

In this paper, we propose an end-to-end network architecture based on Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) over Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) and present a security framework adopting both RSA and Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) authentication. We also introduce handover scenarios in the integrated network and propose corresponding handover schemes, for which we employ a pre-authentication method for the authentication key (AK) pre-distribution and we use the communication framework of the ranging step to implement mutual authentication between subscriber and mobile network. Through our analysis, we show that our proposed handover mechanisms simplify and accelerate the handover process compared with the standard Mobile WiMAX handover scheme while keeping the handover procedure secure.