Secure and Privacy-Preserving Authentication Protocols for Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) have emerged as a promising concept to meet the challenges in next-generation wireless networks such as providing flexible, adaptive, and reconfigurable architecture while offering cost-effective solutions to service providers (Akyildiz et al., 2005). WMNs are multi-hop networks consisting of mesh routers (MRs), which form wireless mesh backbones and Mesh Clients (MCs). The mesh routers provide a rich radio mesh connectivity which significantly reduces the up-front deployment cost of the network. Mesh routers are typically stationary and do not have power constraints. However, the clients are mobile and energy-constrained. Some mesh routers are designated as gateway routers which are connected to the Internet through a wired backbone.