Security and Authentication Concepts for UMTS/WLAN Convergence

For a fast return of investment, network providers have to offer new services for the upcoming 3G mobile communication systems. Unfortunately 3G systems suffer by high installation costs and low quality of services in terms of high delays and low bandwidth. These drawbacks exclude many promising services such as real–time video conferences and multi– player gaming. Furthermore, high network installation costs inhibit quick growth and in turn slow down the recruiting of new customers. Therefore the convergence of 3G technologies with the beneficial wireless local area networks gained a lot of interest lately. Different architectures were introduced to combine these two technologies. The architectures differ in their security concepts. In this paper we give an overview of the discussed architectures and extend them by multi–hop capability in the WLAN network. Multi–hop will decrease the network installation costs furthermore and ease the installation of network components.