A Hierarchical Authentication System for Access Equipment in Internet of Things

Abstract

With the development of Internet of Things (IoT) technology, massive heterogeneous equipment involving all walks of life has been connected to networks. However, many current authentication methods have poor robustness and cannot ensure the safety of access equipment due to the complexity and uncertainty of the network environment. To deal with this problem, a hierarchical authentication system was proposed in this paper. First, an equipment identification method (EIM), using stack denoising autoencoders (SDAs), is developed to weaken the uncertainty to recognize the type of access equipment. Second, an equipment authentication method (EAM), based on the identification result and similarity theory, is designed to improve the verification accuracy to guarantee the credibility of access equipment. Third, the proposed hierarchical authentication system was tested in a real access platform. The experimental results demonstrated the satisfactory performance of this proposed hierarchical authentication system.