Applying IKE/IPsec context transfer to aeronautical networks

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) is currently standardizing an IPv6-based Aeronautical Telecommunications Network (ATN/IP) as a next generation communication network for air traffic management. Thereby, ATN/IP considers Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) as a basic mobility management protocol which provides host mobility. Considering a large number of hosts within an aircraft, the need for network mobility (NEMO) arises. However, the base NEMO protocol does not support route optimization (RO), a feature which provides better end-to-end delay performance. In this paper, we considered the Global Home Agent to Home Agent (HAHA) protocol as a NEMO RO solution for the aeronautical environment. MIPv6/NEMO requires a security association (SA) between MR and HA in order to protect the mobility signalling. In a Global HAHA network, in case MR switches from one HA to another, it has to re-establish the IKE/IPsec SA and perform mobility signalling with the new HA. In this paper, we propose to use the context transfer protocol (CXTP) for re-establishing the SA between MR and the new HA which provides better signalling overhead and delay performance.