Privacy enhanced BSS discovery for non-associated stations
Systems, methods, and mechanisms for a privacy enhanced basic service set (BSS), including privacy enhancements for both access points and wireless stations as well as privacy enchantments for authentication, association, and discovery operations. Further, the systems, methods, and mechanisms disclosed may continue to support legacy wireless stations and are thus, backward compatible. A non-associated PE station may receive, from a PE access point, one or more discovery beacons advertising PE BSSs hosted by the PE access point and transmit, to the PE access point, a request to setup pre-association security protection. The non-associated PE station may, upon setup of pre-association security protection, transmit, to the PE access point, a protected request frame and receive, from the PE access point, a protected response that includes PE access point parameters.
1 . A wireless station, comprising:
at least one antenna;
at least one radio communicatively coupled to the at least one antenna; and
at least one processor in communication with the at least one radio and configured to cause the wireless station to:
receive, from a privacy enhanced (PE) access point, one or more discovery beacons advertising PE basic service sets (BSSs) hosted by the PE access point, wherein at least one discovery beacon of the one or more discovery beacons comprises a power envelope field and a reduced neighbor report (RNR) field that comprises at least a multi-link device (MLD) parameters field comprising a PE access point (AP) field;
transmit, to the PE access point, a request to setup a pre-association security protection;
upon setup of the pre-association security protection, transmit, to the PE access point, a protected request frame; and
receive, from the PE access point, a protected response that comprises a PE access point parameter.
2 . The wireless station of claim 1 ,
wherein the at least one beacon of the one or more discovery beacons further includes a medium access control (MAC) header field and a management message integrity check (MIC) element (MME) field.
3 . The wireless station of claim 2 ,
wherein the RNR field further includes a target beacon transmission time (TBTT) information field comprising at least a short BSS identifier (ID) field, and a BSS parameters field.
4 . The wireless station of claim 3 ,
wherein the short BSS ID field comprises a 4-octets long hash sum of a Service Set Identifier (SSID) associated with a PE BSS.
5 . The wireless station of claim 1 ,
wherein the PE AP field is one bit in length and indicates whether a reported access point is privacy enhanced.
6 . The wireless station of claim 1 ,
wherein, to set up the pre-association security protection, the at least one processor is further configured to cause the wireless station to:
transmit, to the PE access point, a pre-association security negotiation (PASN) setup request message;
receive, from the PE access point, a PASN setup response message; and
transmit, to the PE access point, a PASN setup confirm message.
7 . The wireless station of claim 1 ,
wherein the PE access point parameter comprises PE BSS information.
8 . The wireless station of claim 1 ,
wherein the wireless station is a non-associated PE wireless station.
9 . The wireless station of claim 1 ,
wherein the at least one processor is further configured to:
limit, responsive to the PE AP field indicating that the PE access point is privacy enhanced, transmission of discovery-related identifiers to privacy-enhanced pre-association signaling.
10 . An apparatus, comprising:
a memory; and
at least one processor in communication with the memory and configured to:
receive, from a privacy enhanced (PE) access point, one or more discovery beacons advertising PE basic service sets (BSSs) hosted by the PE access point, wherein at least one discovery beacon of the one or more discovery beacons includes a power envelope field and a reduced neighbor report (RNR) field that comprises at least a multi-link device (MLD) parameters field comprising a PE access point (AP) field;
transmit, to the PE access point, a request to setup a pre-association security protection;
upon setup of the pre-association security protection, transmit, to the PE access point, a protected request frame; and
receive, from the PE access point, a protected response that includes a PE access point parameter.
11 . The apparatus of claim 10 ,
wherein the at least one beacon of the one or more discovery beacons further comprises a medium access control (MAC) header field and a management message integrity check (MIC) element (MME) field.
12 . The apparatus of claim 10 , wherein the RNR field further includes a target beacon transmission time (TBTT) information field comprising at least a short BSS identifier (ID) field, and a BSS parameters field.
13 . The apparatus of claim 10 ,
wherein the PE AP field is one bit in length.
14 . The apparatus of claim 10 ,
wherein, to set up the pre-association security protection, the at least one processor is further configured to:
transmit, to the PE access point, a pre-association security negotiation (PASN) setup request message;
receive, from the PE access point, a PASN setup response message; and
transmit, to the PE access point, a PASN setup confirm message.
15 . The apparatus of claim 10 ,
wherein the PE access point parameter comprises PE BSS information.
16 . A non-transitory computer readable memory medium storing instructions executable by processing circuitry of a non-associated privacy enhanced (PE) wireless station to:
receive, from a PE access point, one or more discovery beacons advertising PE basic service sets (BSSs) hosted by the PE access point, wherein at least one discovery beacon of the one or more discovery beacons comprises a power envelope field and a reduced neighbor report (RNR) field that comprises at least a multi-link device (MLD) parameters field comprising a PE access point (AP) field;
transmit, to the PE access point, a request to setup a pre-association security protection;
upon setup of the pre-association security protection, transmit, to the PE access point, a protected request frame; and
receive, from the PE access point, a protected response that includes a PE access point parameter.
17 . The non-transitory computer readable memory medium of claim 16 ,
wherein the RNR field includes at least a target beacon transmission time (TBTT) information field.
18 . The non-transitory computer readable memory medium of claim 17 ,
wherein the TBTT information field includes at least a short BSS identifier (ID) field, a BSS parameters field, and the MLD parameters field.
19 . The non-transitory computer readable memory medium of claim 16 ,
wherein the PE AP field is one bit in length and indicates whether a reported access point is privacy enhanced.
20 . The non-transitory computer readable memory medium of claim 16 ,
wherein the PE access point parameter comprises PE BSS information.