A Novel Authentication Scheme Supporting Multiple User Access for 5G and Beyond
Chengzhe Lai, Yixiao Ma, Rongxing Lu, Yinghui Zhang, Dong Zheng
Abstract
The deployment of ultra-dense networks in the fifth-generation (5 G) network architecture can significantly improve the quality of wireless links, but this will cause frequent handovers of mobile users and increase authentication delays. Furthermore, the simultaneous influx of a large number of mobile users may cause serious network congestion. Aiming at these problems, this article proposes a novel authentication scheme supporting multi-user access, which fully considers the scenarios of intra-domain handover and inter-domain handover across AMF. Using the characteristics of the network architecture integrated with mobile edge computing (MEC) and software-defined networks (SDN), the user's moving path can be predicted in advance to speed up the handover process. Most importantly, the proposed scheme can perform secure, efficient and flexible mutual authentication and key agreement between the group and the core network by using aggregated message authentication codes with detecting functionality (AMAD) and contributory broadcast encryption technique. Through the use of BAN Logic and Scyther tool verification, the proposed scheme can not only realize multiple user authentication and key agreement, but also fulfill various security goals. Performance evaluations demonstrate that the proposed scheme has moderate computational and communication overhead, and lower transmission overhead compared with existing schemes, which can effectively reduce authentication delay.