Patent ID: 7756510

Claim:
An authentication method for a wireless distribution system including a plurality of base stations providing access service to mobile stations, the method comprising: receiving, at an unregistered base station, an authentication request from a mobile station; multicasting, by the unregistered base station, an identity request for identifying the mobile station to the plurality of base stations of the wireless distribution system; receiving, by the unregistered base station, an identity response from at least one base station among the plurality of base stations in response to the identity request; and performing, by the unregistered base station, authentication of the mobile station on the basis of the identity response, wherein performing authentication of the mobile station includes: determining whether there are base stations one-hop-away from the unregistered base station; and performing a neighbor-supported authentication if there is at least one one-hop-away base station; wherein performing neighbor-supported authentication includes: determining whether a number of the one-hop-away base stations is greater than 1; selecting one of the one-hop-away base stations from among the one-hop-away base stations as a target base station if the number of the one-hop-away base stations is greater than 1; creating a session key shared with the mobile station on the basis of the identity response received from the target base station; and determining the one-hop-away base station as a target base station if the number of the one-hop-away base stations is not greater than 1; wherein creating the session key includes: transmitting the identity response received from the target base station to the mobile station; receiving a transaction request from the mobile station in response to the identity response; transmitting the transaction request to the target base station; receiving a transaction response from the target base station in response to the transaction request; transmitting the transaction response to the mobile station; and computing, at the unregistered base station and the mobile terminal, the session key using the transaction response; and wherein the transaction request includes a transaction identifier chosen by the mobile station, a mobile station ID, an unregistered base station ID, a target base station ID, and a secret shared between the target base station and the mobile station.