Visible Light Communication Based Authentication for Location Base Network Connectivity

Abstract

With the introduction of new technologies and new concepts related to Wi-Fi, more security vulnerabilities have been exposed and risk of data security has been increased. Specially IoT and BYOD concepts deliver more advantages to the organizations while increasing risk. Since Wi-Fi access point can provide its service for several meter radius circle (basically around 20 meters from the center) and also Wi-Fi does not need physical connection to the access point, it could be easily misused by unauthorized persons without even entering to the one’s premises. The major problem of this comes once the access rights were given and they can use it for ever until the access authentications changes. Visible Light Communication (VLC) is a blooming research area which uses visible light spectrum as the communication channel. Exponential growth of Light Emitting Diode (LED) deployment as a light source is encouraged to use for communication purposes as well. With the introduction of VLC, LED can be used for communication while providing the primary function of illumination. Since location-based network access protocols have not been implemented for Wi-Fi devices, this research has been conducted with the intention of using VLC to perform location-based authentication. In the proposed location authentication protocol, VLC technology is used for authentication purpose and Wi-Fi is used for data transfer once the device has been authenticated. The proposed protocol provides location-based connectivity to Wi-Fi devices with minimum changes to Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) and Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2) protocol by using VLC. Using the emerging Visible Light-based communication technology, the proposed authentication protocol key distribution is done through VLC. Thus automatically the network connectivity will be restricted to the people in the location where VLC device (LED) transmits the timely key. The Visible Light is incapable of penetrating through walls and that feature has been used here for providing location based access to the Wi-Fi network.