Access control in 5G communication networks using simple PKI certificates

Abstract

5G mobile communication is being designed as heterogeneous network where different platforms, several technologies, and various cell sizes are deployed to fit specific requirements in terms of data rates and latency. The heterogeneity nature of this network will lead to new security issues and threats, especially when the number of deployed mobile devices become very important. In this paper, we propose a simple PKI certificate based access control scheme that is implemented on a multi-layer communication architecture designed for 5G networks. In addition, we establish a scalable authentication and handover schemes that can ensure security within the network. To this purpose, we define various types of certificates with different features and utilization. The authentication scheme is based on zero knowledge proof (ZKP) and is used to achieve secure device registration procedure before generating authorization certificates that will be used to enable secure device-to-device communication. We use simulation work to assess the efficiency of our scheme in terms of total overhead and average latency. Performance evaluation results show that our scheme is more scalable than existing authentication and handover schemes.