A secure registration scheme for femtocell embedded networks

Abstract

Recently, femtocell received a signification interest to improve the indoor coverage and provide better voice and data services. Lots of work has been done to improve the femtocell security, but still there are some issues which need to be addressed. Our contribution to the femtocell security is to protect secure zone (femtocell coverage area within macrocell) from unauthorized (non-CSG) users. In this paper, we propose a secure registration scheme for femtocell embedded network. In this scheme, only Closed Subscriber Group (CSG) users are allowed to access both the femtocell and macrocell services within the secure zone. By prioritizing the femtocell over macrocell within the secure zone, every user will try to camp on femtocell and invoke location registration to the femtocell as the user enters to the femtocell coverage area. If the user is within the allowed users list, the femtocell will allow the user otherwise femtocell will send a reject message to the user and also send the user information to the core network. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht(Outside the USA).