Research On Group-Based MTC Device Access Authentication Schem In LTE Networks

The development of M2 M communications which is the main supporting technology of the internet of things has led the development of the internet of things industry. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project(3GPP) formally defined M2 M communication through mobile cellular network as Machine Type Communication in Release 10. However the complex business and massive user access of MTC communication have brought great challenges to mobile cellular communication systems, one of the key problems is the signaling congestion which is a branch of network congestion: In order to ensure the security access of MTC devices and subsequent communication security of MTC applications, MTC devices need to execute a process of authentication and key agreement when accessing the network. So when a large number of MTC devices which are located in the same area or have the same business send their access network request at the same time, because each MTC device will execute a complete authentication, so it will generate a lot of signaling overhead, some key nodes in LTE network such as HSS, MME may occur signaling congestion.In order to solve the above problems, considering the 3GPP is studying group properties of MTC in Release 12, the schem based on device grouping has been accepted by many scholars in these years. In this paper, we propose a better Group-based MTC device access authentication schem in LTE network, based on the analysis of the current Group-based MTC device access authentication schems.In our schem, the technology of aggregating message authentication codes is adopted at MTC group leader, and realizes the simultaneous authentication of all the MTC devices in the group. By only computing group authentication parameters at HSS, the signaling format is simplified, and the computing time is saved. At the same time, by producing n instead of one group authentication vectors at HSS when MTC group send the first authentication request, then transmitting the n group authentication vectors to MME and storing in it, the HSS is no longer required to participate in the subsequent access authentication processes, so the burden of HSS is reduced, and the signaling cost is further reduced, at the same time the transmission delay is greatly reduced. In addition, in order to reduce the computation cost, when there is no valid MTC group authentication vector at MME, our schem need to add two signaling in the access authentication request phase: group message authentication code request, group message authentication code response.Finally, the security attributes of the mechanism are verified using ProVerif, and the signaling cost, transmission delay and computation overhead are analyzed. From the results, we can see that our schem can realize mutual authentication between the LTE network and the MTC equipment, and ensure the key obtained through the key agreement will not be monitored or tampered. In addition, the proposed schem can not only realize all MTC devices in group are simultaneously authenticated by the network, but also further reduce the signaling overhead, transmission delay, and computational overhead. Thus, the authentication efficiency is improved, and the purpose of relieving the signaling congestion is achieved.