A Multiple End-Devices Authentication Scheme for LoRaWAN

Abstract

With the advancement of the Internet of Things, the LoRa Alliance produced the Long-Range Wide-Area Network (LoRaWAN) Specification, allowing end-devices to transit through a gateway and join the LoRa network after completing a join procedure. When an end-device joins the LoRaWAN network, it must send a join request message to the network server and wait for the network server to verify such request under the current LoRaWAN join protocol. However, as the number of end-devices grows exponentially, network server verification messages will grow linearly with the number of end-devices. This paper proposes an authentication system for multiple end-devices that complies with the LoRa Alliance’s specifications and decreases the joining latency imposed by the network server verifying messages. The proposed authentication system is formally secure against the server and end-device impersonation. In addition, we assess the authentication overhead and compare it to the standard approach.