| The increasing demand for ubiquitous Internet services imposes more security threats to communications due to open mediums in wireless networks. Thus, security mechanisms are proposed to protect communications, while putting more overheads on the transmission. As one of most widely used security mechanisms, authentication is used to identify mobile nodes (MNs), prevent unauthorized usage, and negotiate credentials with heavy overhead, while inducing heavy burdens in wireless networks.; In this thesis, we propose in-depth design and analysis of the authentication protocol and architecture to improve the authentication efficiency in wireless networks. In the single-hop wireless networks, we first analyze the impact of authentication on the security and quality of service (QoS) quantitatively. Then, we present enhanced protocols for net-to-net and mobile-to-net authentication on hierarchical authentication architecture (HAA). The enhanced protocols are proposed to reduce the authentication delay and cost. Moreover, considering that HAA is not sufficient to network manageability and security, we propose a new architecture with two control schemes for net-to-net and mobile-to-net authentication. The architecture is composed of licensed authentication centers and intelligent control schemes based on a utility function, which is effective to reducing the authentication latency, improving network scalability, and security. In the multi-hop wireless networks, we propose reliable clustering algorithms to improve the service availability, which can cooperate with the proposed authentication protocols between clusters. The energy consumption and mobility of nodes are evaluated quantitatively, and the proposed authentication protocols are entangled with the construction of hierarchical clusters dynamically, which is not only able to handle the failure of nodes efficiently, but also able to guarantee the security even from the start of constructing network architectures when mobile nodes frequently join and leave the multi-hop wireless networks.; As shown in the numerical and simulation results, by improving the authentication efficiency significantly, our research demonstrates an in-depth impact of authentication on security and QoS in wireless networks, and builds a solid ground for future improvement of authentication protocols and architectures. |
