Rapidly-deployable self-organizing wireless networks such as wireless LANs, mobile ad hoc networks and wireless sensor networks, particularly the convergence of such technologies, have received tremendous attention in the last few years, leading to a new type of network called wireless mesh network (WMN). WMNs have been posed as the competitive rival to the future wireless cellular technologies and provide a promising technology for ubiquitous high-speed network access, secure facility surveillance, disaster relief, public safety and homeland security. While many research efforts in WMNs have been made, security is still an untapped area. This project investigates this fundamental issue with the goal to develop a light-weight secure authentication and billing architecture, termed UPASS. UPASS features a novel user-broker-operator trust model built upon conventional certificate-based cryptography and emerging ID-based cryptography. Under this model, each user is furnished with a universal pass used to realize seamless roaming across WMN domains and gain ubiquitous secure network access. Moreover, an incontestable billing scheme is developed to facilitate the proper charging for the network usage through a lightweight real-time micropayment protocol built upon the combination of digital signature and one-way hash-chain techniques. Finally, since WMNs have been envisioned to be the most viable solutions to achieving seamless high-speed access with significantly low deployment cost, the proposed research will play a significant role in the commercialization of WMN technologies. Hence, it can have a significant impact on the telecommunications industries. The project benefits from the participation of minority faculty and students spanning undergraduate to doctoral levels across two institutions.
