in a wireless lan environment , before a supplicant establishes a wireless connection for transferring data to an authenticator under the psk mode , the supplicant needs to perform a 4 - way handshake with the authenticator to confirm that the pmks held by them are the same and is live , and to generate a key used for a unicast communication ( refers to a wireless communication established between a single supplicant and the authenticator ). a group key used by the authenticator for establishing a broadcast communication among multiple supplicants on the other hand can be generated by a group key handshake . by utilizing the method disclosed by the present invention , under the ieee 802 . 11i / wpa psk mode , an authenticator of a wireless lan is allowed to hold a plurality ( more than one ) of candidate keys ( each key being a different pmk ), and different supplicants ( or different supplicant sets , in which each supplicant set includes at least one supplicant ) are allowed to hold different pmks . by doing so , each supplicant ( or supplicant set ) is unable to know pmks held by other supplicants ( or supplicant sets ), and even if any supplicant ( or supplicant set ) becomes untrustworthy , the authenticator and other remaining supplicants are still able to establish a secure wireless communication . please refer to fig1 . fig1 is a perspective diagram showing a 4 - way handshake between an authenticator 110 and a supplicant 120 according to the present invention . as shown in the figure , the supplicant 120 holds a key ( the key being a pmk ) and the authenticator 110 holds a plurality of candidate keys ( each candidate key being a different pmk ), and the key held by the supplicant 120 is among the plurality of keys held by the authenticator 110 ( however before the 4 - way handshake is performed , the authenticator 110 is unaware of which one of the plurality of candidate keys is the key held by the supplicant 120 ). according to the method proposed by the present invention , the authenticator 110 is able to determine which one of the candidate keys is the key held by the supplicant 120 during a 4 - way handshake and establish a wireless communication with the supplicant 120 according to the key held by the supplicant 120 ( to be more precisely , a pairwise transient key ( ptk ) is calculated according to the pmk key held by the supplicant 120 for establishing a wireless communication with the supplicant 120 ). as shown in fig1 , the supplicant 120 first sends an eapol - start packet ( eapol being extensible authentication protocol over lan ) to the authenticator 110 to initiate the 4 - way handshake . the authenticator 110 will then generate a random value anonce after the eapol - start packet is received and send anonce to the supplicant 120 through the first packet in the 4 - way handshake , eapol - key 1 . upon receiving eapol - key 1 , the supplicant 120 also generates a random value snonce and substitute anonce , snonce , its own pmk , and other related values into an equation ( such as prf - 512 , in which prf is abbreviated for pseudo random function ) for generating a pairwise transient key ( ptk ). the first 128 bits of the ptk ( also referred to as a key confirmation key ( kck )) is used to generate an integrity check value for verifying the packet content of the 4 - way handshake . the integrity check value is referred to as the message integrity code ( mic ). next , the supplicant 120 will generate the second packet in the 4 - way handshake , eapol - key 2 , in which the snonce and the integrity check value ( mic ) of the packet will be enclosed , and send it to the authenticator 110 . if the prior art method is used , upon receiving eapol - key 2 , the authenticator 110 will also substitute anonce , snonce , its own pmk , and other related values into the same equation used by the supplicant ( such as prf - 512 ) to generate a ptk , use the kck in the ptk to calculate the mic of eapol - key 2 , and compare the calculated value with the mic value enclosed in eapol - key 2 . if both supplicant 120 and authenticator 110 holds the same pmk , since the parameters substituted by both parties into the equation are the same , the mic generated by both parties should also be the same . through this way , the authenticator 110 can verify if the supplicant 120 holds the same pmk as it does . after finishing the following eapol - key 3 and eapol - key 4 exchange , the authenticator 110 and the supplicant 120 will install the generated ptk . afterward , the unicast communication between the authenticator 110 and the supplicant 120 is encrypted based on the installation of ptk . under the architecture of the present invention , the authenticator 110 is allowed to have a plurality of different candidate keys ( each candidate key being a different pmk , in which only one of the candidate keys will be the key held by the supplicant 120 , and the authenticator 110 does not know which one of the candidate keys is the key held by the supplicant 120 in advance ). the authenticator 110 will utilize the integrity check value ( mic ) in eapol - key 2 to determine which one of the candidate keys is the one held by the supplicant 120 and complete the rest of the 4 - way handshake with the supplicant 120 successfully . in this example , after the second packet eapol - key 2 is received , the authenticator 110 will substitute anonce , snonce , other related values , and each candidate key into the same equation ( such as prf - 512 ) to generate a corresponding ptk . the candidate key , generating the same mic value as the one enclosed in eapol - key 2 , will be selected by the authenticator as the pmk held by the supplicant and used for the rest of the 4 - way handshake . if the authenticator t 110 holds a substantial number of candidate keys , a timeout is likely to occur in the supplicant 120 and a new eapol - start packet will be sent to the authenticator 110 before the authenticator 110 can determine the key held by the supplicant 120 . under this condition , the present invention enables the authenticator 110 to ignore the eapol - start packet and continue the determination of the supplicant key , and not until the key held by the supplicant 120 is determined will a new 4 - way handshake be resumed . please refer to fig2 . fig2 is a perspective diagram showing an interaction between the authenticator 110 and the supplicant 120 under this condition . if a key collision ( refers to a condition when more than one candidate keys generate the same mic value as the one enclosed in eapol - key 2 ) takes place during a candidate key selection process , the authenticator 110 will restart the 4 - way handshake according to a new anonce , a new snonce , and a new mic value is used for examining the keys involved in the collision until an unique candidate key corresponding to key used by the supplicant can be determined . it is also possible that the authenticator 110 maintains a lookup table for storing a plurality of internet addresses ( usually mac addresses ) of the supplicant and candidate keys corresponding to each internet address . if the internet address of the supplicant 120 and a corresponding key are already stored in the lookup table before a wireless communication is established with the supplicant 120 , the authenticator 110 can use the key to perform the 4 - way handshake with the supplicant 120 ( thereby avoiding the numerous trial and errors with each candidate key after eapol - key 2 is received ). if the internet address of the supplicant 120 and the corresponding candidate key are not stored in the lookup table , the authenticator 110 will also perform the 4 - way handshake with the supplicant 120 according to the workflow from fig1 and fig2 , and store the internet address of the supplicant 120 and its corresponding candidate key into the lookup table after the key is determined . according to the proposed method of the present invention , a normal wireless communication with an authenticator can be established by simply providing a different key ( a different pmk ) to each different supplicant ( or different supplicant set ). hence , if any one of the supplicants ( or supplicant set ) becomes untrustworthy , it is unnecessary to reset the keys owned by other trustworthy supplicants since the key used by each supplicant ( or supplicant set ) is different . as a result , the transmission security and convenience to system maintenance are great increased . those skilled in the art will readily observe that numerous modifications and alterations of the device and method may be made while retaining the teachings of the invention . accordingly , the above disclosure should be construed as limited only by the metes and bounds of the appended claims .