Energy-Efficient Mutual Authentication Protocol for Handhled Devices Based on Public Key Cryptography

Abstract

 Abstract—Mobility is one of the major features of wireless communication systems and handheld devices form a major part of these systems. The recent growth in the functionality and features of the handheld devices has increased their use and importance in different applications around the world. Unfortunately, the security threats and their intensities are also increasing with the passage of time. The limited resources like battery, memory, and computational power of these devices is a bottle neck in the security of such devices. Meanwhile, the focus of recent research is to propose better security solutions with limited resource usage. Authentication of handheld devices and servers with each other is one such security issue has not yet been solved satisfactorily. Many authentication protocols based on symmetric or asymmetric cryptography has been proposed. The former one is more feasible in terms of energy and speed but not as secure and reliable as the last one. The last one is more reliable but on the other hand it consumes more energy. In this paper, we propose enhancements to the existing asymmetric authentication protocol based on FIPS 196 standards. With these enhancements, the energy consumption in handheld devices is reduced during authentication process while the reliability and security level, inherent in the asymmetric cryptographic algorithms, remains the same.