A lightweight D2D authentication protocol for relay coverage scenario in 5G mobile network

Abstract

5G cellular network is becoming a preferred communication network for deployment of the Internet of Things (IoT), due to its high speed, better connectivity, increased bandwidth, lower latency and flexibility. As a result, the traffic load of 5G cellular network is bound to increase manifold in the near future. Therefore, there is a requirement to explore the use of technologies that have the potential to ease the traffic load off the core network. Device-to-Device (D2D) communication in 5G cellular network for relay coverage is one such technology that enables two devices to communicate directly with each other through a local communication medium, even if one of them is not in the coverage area of the 5G cellular network. This technology has the potential to provide wider coverage, reduce the traffic load of the core network and minimize communication latency. For smooth D2D communication, the devices need to be authenticated. In technical specification-23.303 that is standardized by 3rd generation partnership project, basic guidelines for D2D communication are provided. However, in this specification no mechanism for authentication of the devices is proposed. It is also observed that in recent times a few authentication protocols have been proposed for D2D communication, but none of them are designed for relay coverage scenario in 5G cellular network. Hence, to fill the above discussed gap, in this paper we propose a lightweight D2D protocol for relay coverage scenario in 5G Mobile Network, that uses elliptic curve cryptography and symmetric key cryptography. To check the robustness of the proposed protocol, security analysis using formal verification techniques/tools like BAN logic, Scyther and AVISPA is done. The results of the analysis show the protocol to be safe against various attacks. Moreover, performance analysis of the protocol shows it to be lightweight and efficient, in terms of computation and communication cost, compared to other related works in the literature.