A Variable Threshold-Value Authentication Architecture for Wireless Mesh Networks

TLDR

Wireless Mesh Networks are critical for last‑mile connectivity, yet they require secure, rapid authentication that minimizes topology changes and supports swift network switching. This work introduces Variable Threshold‑value Authentication (VTA), a lightweight, tolerant authentication framework for service‑oriented WMNs. VTA maintains fixed threshold values for the system private key through node‑activated mechanisms while dynamically adjusting those thresholds when nodes join or leave the authentication server group. Simulation results demonstrate that VTA eliminates the drawbacks of static threshold schemes and substantially improves system cost relative to threshold‑free approaches.

Abstract

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) play a very important role on ＂the last mile＂ in a variety of wireless network access with infrastructure support. It is necessary to provide guaranteed security while minimizing WMNs topology change by considering both rapid authentication of mobile terminals and demand for fast switch between different wireless networks. In this paper, we propose a novel design paradigm toward lightweight and tolerant authentication for service-oriented WMNs, named Variable Threshold-value Authentication (VTA) architecture. On one hand, VTA's intrusion-tolerant ability is ensured to design a series of node activated mechanisms to remain threshold values t and n of system private key unchanged. On the other hand, VTA changes threshold values t and n when nodes leave/join authentication server group. Analysis and simulation results show that VTA can not only overcome the disadvantage of those static threshold value schemes, but also largely increase system cost comparing to the schemes not equipped with threshold mechanism for WMNs.