Design of hybrid authentication scheme and key distribution for mobile multi-hop relay in IEEE 802.16j

Mobile multi-hop relay (MMR) network is known to have the strength of easy installation and convenient management because of its self-organizing and self-healing characteristics. However, MMR is also known to be vulnerable to security problems for the very same reason. In this paper, we propose a new hybrid authentication algorithm for IEEE 802.16j MMR network service. The proposed scheme uses centralized authentication when a mobile station (MS) or a relay station (RS) initially joins the MMR network, and uses distributed authentication for hop-by-hop authentication between the mobile nodes. We analyze the procedure of the proposed scheme in detail, and examine its usefulness when applied to the MMR network. The proposed scheme can be used in any mobile multi-hop network as well as IEEE 802.16j MMR network.