Fast authentication in a collaborative wireless access network

In this paper, we propose a novel inter-domain fast-authentication scheme based on a concept of "trust clouds". A trust cloud is formed among neighbouring access points based on a relationship among the owners of the access points. Fast-authentication for inter-domain sites is achieved through cooperation among the trust cloud members. The approach is distributed without a central authentication server being involved in distributing the security master key to the access points belonging to the trust cloud. We propose two algorithms for mobile visiting nodes to perform authentication at handoff and show through a simulation study that the approach significantly reduces authentication delay compared with traditional server based schemes.