Study on the influence of transmission errors on RSNA authentication mechanisms in IEEE 802.11 WLAN

Wireless Local Area Networks have been increasingly deployed and become very popular. They offer important advantages such as the higher flexibility and user mobility, however, this kind of networks also present some security concerns due to its broadcast nature. Security mechanisms can be classified into two groups: user authentication and data confidentiality.The IEEE 802.11i specification presents RSNA authentication mechanism, which allows user authentication employing IEEE 802.1x protocol and EAP methods. Authentication mechanisms consist in an important step of the handoff process, which occurs when a mobile node leaves the coverage area of an access point and performs association with another. Handoff results in a critical function for IEEE 802.11 MAC operation due to important delay restrictions. Thus, pre-authentication and IEEE 802.11r mechanisms have been presented to allow important latency reduction, which provide interesting results in real time communications.Besides, usually, WLAN users employ mobile devices, which provide limited capabilities in terms of energy management.In this way, in this paper, we evaluate authentication latency and battery consumption by means of an analytical model that we have developed for this purpose. The analysis also includes the influence of transmission errors, which allows the evaluation of authentication mechanisms in error-prone scenarios.