A new authentication protocol for UMTS mobile networks

Abstract

This paper analyzes the authentication and key agreement (AKA) protocol for universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) mobile networks, where a new protocol is proposed. In our proposed protocol, the mobile station is responsible for generating of authentication token (AUTN) and random number (RAND). The home location register is responsible for comparison of response and expected response to take a decision. Therefore, the bottleneck at authentication center is avoided by reducing the number of messages between mobile and authentication center. The authentication time delay, call setup time, andsignalling traffic are minimized in the proposed protocol. A fluid mobility model is used to investigate the performance of signalling traffic and load transaction messages between mobile database, such as home location register (HLR) andvisitor location register (VLR) for both the current protocol and the proposed protocol. The simulation results show that the authentication delay and current load transaction messages between entities and bandwidth are minimized as compared to current protocol. Therefore, the performance and the authentication delay time have been improved significantly.