Patent ID: 7903645
Filing Date: 2011-03-08
Classification: H04W

Abstract:
1. A method for heterogeneous secure associations in Wireless Fidelity Personal Area Networks (WiFi PAN), comprising: designating as a regular mobile node (MN) a MN which establishes a security association with a PAN Master as it advertised by said PAN Master and designating as an outstanding MN as a MN which establishes a security association which differs from that advertised by said PAN Master; and differentiating by said PAN Master between subscribed and not subscribed multicast packets and if a currently processed frame is sent to a subscribed multicast address and both said Regular MN and said Outstanding MN are subscribed to said multicast address, then said PAN Master will convert the frame to unicast and will send to each subscribed Outstanding MN using its unicast security model, wherein said MN and said Master are implemented in hardware or a combination of hardware and software.