EAP Authentication Mechanism for Ad Hoc Wireless LAN

Wireless networks have some security issues, mainly due to its wireless nature (open and
non-physical), that need to be addressed. One of the solutions to improve wireless
network security is the IEEE 802.1X specification, which is based on Extensible
Authentication Protocol (EAP). EAP is an authentication framework that can support
multiple authentication methods. With its advantage of being flexible, EAP has been used
in many types of networks, wired and wireless, including the infrastructure model of
wireless LAN. With EAP’s flexibility, it might be also possible to use EAP as a generic
authentication mechanism in other types of networks. This paper studies and explores the
feasibility of using EAP in ad-hoc model of WLAN and proposes a mechanism to
implement EAP in ad hoc WLAN based on EAP multiplexing model. We also propose a
mechanism to select a suitable EAP method out of a set of EAP methods to be used in
authentication process in heterogeneous wireless network, in which there are different
types of nodes with different specifications and capabilities in the network. Thus each
node may support different type of EAP authentication method. Toward the end of this
paper, we formally specify and verify the proposed authentication mechanism in order to
proof and obtain strong beliefs of the authentication.