Privacy-Preserving Intra-MME Group Handover via MRN in LTE-A Networks for Repeated Trips

Abstract

In Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) networks, Mobile Relay Nodes (MRNs) are installed in fast moving buses and trains to connect the passengers' devices to evolved Node B (eNB). However, since the MRNs and eNBs are installed in open environment, they can be compromised to launch security and privacy attacks. In this paper, we propose a privacy preserving intra Mobility Management Entity (MME) group handover scheme in LTE-A networks for repeated trips. Comparing to the existing schemes, the proposed scheme is devised to achieve the following requirements. First, the MRNs should be able to authenticate the received messages so that the messages sent from external attackers can be dropped by the MRNs rather than forwarding them to the core network. Second, the proposed scheme also aims to reduce the computational and signaling overhead and establish secure session keys. Third, the scheme aims to prevent MRNs and eNBs from tracking passengers' locations especially if they take same trip regularly. Our analysis demonstrates that the proposed scheme can achieve our security and privacy objectives. Our performance evaluations demonstrate that the proposed scheme requires a few number of messages and low computation overhead.