Access Authentication of Mass Device Connections for MTC in LTE Networks

Abstract

Machine Type Communication, also called Machine to Machine communication, is one of the next generations of sophisticated techniques for future wireless communications. It is attracting tremendous interest in standardization organizations such as the third Generation Partnership Project. Accommodating data and signaling traffic from massive Machine Type Communication devices is a challenging task to ensure the security of Machine Type Communication applications in Long Term Evolution networks, as the number of Machine Type Communication devices continues to increase. Since each Machine Type Communication device has to implement an independent access authentication procedure specified by the current third Generation Partnership Project standard, it will incur severe signaling congestions in the Long Term Evolution networks when a large number of Machine Type Communication devices simultaneously connect to the network. In this paper, we propose a new access authentication and key agreement scheme based on an aggregate signature to avoid signaling overload in Long Term Evolution network elements. Our scheme can greatly reduce the signal traffic for a multitude of Machine Type Communication devices connected to the network and also provide robust security protection with desirable efficiency. The experimental results and formal verification using the AVISPA and SPAN tools show that the proposed scheme is efficient and secure against various malicious attacks.