Towards secure wirelessMAN: revisiting and evaluating authentication in WiMAX

Wireless communication is highly susceptible to security outbreaks with shear advancement in signal processing technology followed by immense deployment of high-speed mobile communication networks. Pitfalls in current architecture of IEEE 802.16 or Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) have been put forth in recent literature, based on analytical reasoning and design methodologies. With identification of these vulnerabilities, some solutions have also been proposed for their rectification; however, the experimental assessment of these solutions has not been carried out in appropriate manners to justify the satisfaction of constraints. In this paper, we present a generic methodology to simulate and analyze the authentication protocols in WiMAX based on obtained results. We focus on the 1^st and 2^nd version of Privacy & Key Management (PKM) Protocols, which are implemented in the WiMAX architecture at present and compare their performance characteristics with another proposed solution ISNAP; which claims to eradicate most of the existing threats with introducing minimum overheads. The performance evaluation of these protocols has been carried out by simulating the behavior of BS and SS nodes in real-time wireless network using Linux based hosts. This work intends to establish the formal basis to justify the claims put forth in the specification of ISNAP against PKM v1 & v2.