Novel Framework for Secure Handover Authentication Protocol for 5G Mobile Network

Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive solution for secret key generation and user authentication for 5G mobile networks. Our solution exploits the integration between physical layer and cryptographic security primitives. The presented secure secret key generation and authentication protocol based on exploiting physical layer attributes Angle of Arrival (AoA) and merges between cryptography and non-cryptography techniques (physical layer security) to obtain secure and fast handover in 5G mobile network. Huge increasing of the exchanging data and the lack of the current usable spectrum (several hundred megahertz and a few gigahertz) led to the adoption of millimeter wave (mmWave) 5G mobile networks. The opportunity of the un usable spectrum in the millimeter wave (mmwave) range from 30~300 GHz mandates the utility of small cells with base stations (BS) equipped with large numbers of antennas massive Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO). This new architecture achieves better spectral and energy efficiencies, meanwhile, it also brings new challenges in security provisioning and new stringent latency requirements and potential risk of some security attacks. Impersonation and man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks are examples of security vulnerabilities originated from the probable recurrent handovers and authentication processes in small cells architecture and Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets). The assessment and simulation for the proposed protocol has been proved using AVISPA tool against (MitM) attack and MATLAB tool against impersonation attack. The proposed protocol has the ability to mitigate these attacks with no extra communications overhead, yet, with tolerable delay of estimation process.