Wireless networks are inherently more vulnerable than their wired counterparts. In addition, complications arise in the presence of node mobility and dynamic network topology. Moreover, intermittent connectivity, whether caused by mobility or periodic node sleep, brings about additional challenges. At the same time, node resource constraints make direct adoption of existing security solutions difficult, if not impossible. Wireless Communication Network Security and Privacy analyze important problems in the realms of wireless networks and mobile computing. The Security aspects relate to authentication, access control and authorization, nonrepudation, privacy and confidentiality, integrity, and auditing. Privacy is an essential feature of any product or service.
TopWireless Communication Networking And Technologies
Wireless communications have become a very interesting sector for the provision of telecommunication services. Mobile networks are available almost anytime and anywhere. The popularity of wireless handheld devices is high. The services offered are strongly increasing. They vary from simple communication services to applications for special and sensitive purposes such as electronic commerce, medical services and digital cash (Thurwachter, 2002).
Due to low cost, low power consumption, flexible, no physical infrastructure and easy to deploy, wireless communications have been an admired research area over the past few years with tremendous growth in the population of wireless users. Nowadays, there are number of wireless technologies on hand for long range applications like cellular mobile, satellite communications, Radio Frequency (RF), and short range applications such as Bluetooth, Infrared (IR), Near Field Communication (NFC), ZigBee, Ultra Wide Band (UWB). These short range wireless technologies are being used in many wireless networks like wireless local area networks (WLAN), wireless body area networks (WBANs), wireless personal area networks (WPANs), and, ad-hoc network (Tachikawa, 2002).
The IEEE 802.11 standard for wireless local area networks (also known as Wi-Fi) currently supports multiple over-the-air modulation techniques in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequency bands with speeds between 11 and 540 Mbit/s. In the most common setup, the infrastructure mode, a computer or a mobile phone connects to an access point, which offers further connection to the fixed Internet. The area covered by a single access point is known as a hotspot. The IEEE 802.11 standard also allows for mesh networks and for peer-to-peer (wireless ad hoc) connections (Chen, 2007).
In future wireless protocols and communication environments (networks), the security will play a key role in transmitted information operations. Cryptography is an essential part of today’s users’ needs, hence recent and future wireless communication systems have special needs for cryptography. Most of the widely used wireless communication systems support all different types of encryption. The user can select the best-suited algorithm for the needs of the application (McCabe, 2007).