Privacy-aware Secure Region-based Handover for Small Cell Networks in 5G-enabled Mobile Communication

The 5G mobile communication network provides seamless communications between users and service providers and promises to achieve several stringent requirements, such as seamless mobility and massive connectivity. Although 5G can offer numerous benefits, security and privacy issues still need to be addressed. For example, the inclusion of small cell networks (SCN) into 5G brings the network closer to the connected users, providing a better quality of services (QoS), resulting in a significant increase in the number of Handover procedures (HO), which will affect the security, latency and efficiency of the network. It is then crucial to design a scheme that supports seamless handovers through secure authentication to avoid the consequences of SCN. To address this issue, this article proposes a secure region-based handover scheme with user anonymity and an efficient revocation mechanism that supports seamless connectivity for SCNs in 5G. In this context, we introduce three privacy-preserving authentication protocols, i.e., initial authentication protocol, intra-region handover protocol and inter-region handover protocol, for dealing with three communication scenarios. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to consider the privacy and security in both the intra-region and inter-region handover scenarios in 5G communication. Detailed security and performance analysis of our proposed scheme is presented to show that it is resilient against many security threats, is cost-effective in computation and provides an efficient solution for the 5G enabled mobile communication

On predictive routing of security contexts in an all-IP network

While mobile nodes (MNs) undergo handovers across inter-wireless access networks, their security contexts must be propagated for secure re-establishment of on-going application sessions, such as those in secure mobile internet protocol (IP), authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) services. Routing security contexts via an IP network either on-demand or based on MNs' mobility prediction, imposes new challenging requirements of secure cross-handover services and security context management. In this paper, we present a context router (CXR) that manages security contexts in an all-IP network, providing seamless and secure handover services for the mobile users that carry multimedia-access devices. A CXR is responsible for (1) monitoring of MNs' cross-handover, (2) analysis of MNs' movement patterns, and (3) routing of security contexts ahead of MNs' arrival at relevant access points. The predictive routing reduces the delay in the underlying security association that would otherwise fetch an involved security context from a remote server. The predictive routing of security contexts is performed based on statistical learning of MNs' movement pattern, gauging (dis)similarities between the patterns obtained via distance measurements. The CXR has been evaluated with a prototypical implementation based on an MN mobility model on a grid. Our evaluation results support the predictive routing mechanism's improvement in seamless and secure cross-handover services by a factor of 2.5. Also, the prediction mechanism is shown to outperform the Kalman filter-based method [13] as a Kalman Fiter-based mechanism up to 1.5 and 3.6 times regarding prediction accuracy and computation performance, respectively. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/65037/1/135_ftp.pd

Secure and privacy-aware proxy mobile IPv6 protocol for vehicle-to-grid networks

Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) networks have emerged as a new communication paradigm between Electric Vehicles (EVs) and the Smart Grid (SG). In order to ensure seamless communications between mobile EVs and the electric vehicle supply equipment, the support of ubiquitous and transparent mobile IP communications is essential in V2G networks. However, enabling mobile IP communications raises real concerns about the possibility of tracking the locations of connected EVs through their mobile IP addresses. In this paper, we employ certificate-less public key cryptography in synergy with the restrictive partially blind signature technique to construct a secure and privacy-aware proxy mobile IPv6 (SP-PMIPv6) protocol for V2G networks. SP-PMIPv6 achieves low authentication latency while protecting the identity and location privacy of the mobile EV. We evaluate the SP-PMIPv6 protocol in terms of its authentication overhead and the information-theoretic uncertainty derived by the mutual information metric to show the high level of achieved anonymity

Flat Cellular (UMTS) Networks

Traditionally, cellular systems have been built in a hierarchical manner: many specialized cellular access network elements that collectively form a hierarchical cellular system. When 2G and later 3G systems were designed there was a good reason to make system hierarchical: from a cost-perspective it was better to concentrate traffic and to share the cost of processing equipment over a large set of users while keeping the base stations relatively cheap. However, we believe the economic reasons for designing cellular systems in a hierarchical manner have disappeared: in fact, hierarchical architectures hinder future efficient deployments. In this paper, we argue for completely flat cellular wireless systems, which need just one type of specialized network element to provide radio access network (RAN) functionality, supplemented by standard IP-based network elements to form a cellular network. While the reason for building a cellular system in a hierarchical fashion has disappeared, there are other good reasons to make the system architecture flat: (1) as wireless transmission techniques evolve into hybrid ARQ systems, there is less need for a hierarchical cellular system to support spatial diversity; (2) we foresee that future cellular networks are part of the Internet, while hierarchical systems typically use interfaces between network elements that are specific to cellular standards or proprietary. At best such systems use IP as a transport medium, not as a core component; (3) a flat cellular system can be self scaling while a hierarchical system has inherent scaling issues; (4) moving all access technologies to the edge of the network enables ease of converging access technologies into a common packet core; and (5) using an IP common core makes the cellular network part of the Internet

An eco-friendly hybrid urban computing network combining community-based wireless LAN access and wireless sensor networking

Computer-enhanced smart environments, distributed environmental monitoring, wireless communication, energy conservation and sustainable technologies, ubiquitous access to Internet-located data and services, user mobility and innovation as a tool for service differentiation are all significant contemporary research subjects and societal developments. This position paper presents the design of a hybrid municipal network infrastructure that, to a lesser or greater degree, incorporates aspects from each of these topics by integrating a community-based Wi-Fi access network with Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) functionality. The former component provides free wireless Internet connectivity by harvesting the Internet subscriptions of city inhabitants. To minimize session interruptions for mobile clients, this subsystem incorporates technology that achieves (near-)seamless handover between Wi-Fi access points. The WSN component on the other hand renders it feasible to sense physical properties and to realize the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm. This in turn scaffolds the development of value-added end-user applications that are consumable through the community-powered access network. The WSN subsystem invests substantially in ecological considerations by means of a green distributed reasoning framework and sensor middleware that collaboratively aim to minimize the network's global energy consumption. Via the discussion of two illustrative applications that are currently being developed as part of a concrete smart city deployment, we offer a taste of the myriad of innovative digital services in an extensive spectrum of application domains that is unlocked by the proposed platform

MIRAI Architecture for Heterogeneous Network

One of the keywords that describe next-generation wireless communications is "seamless." As part of the e-Japan Plan promoted by the Japanese Government, the Multimedia Integrated Network by Radio Access Innovation project has as its goal the development of new technologies to enable seamless integration of various wireless access systems for practical use by 2005. This article describes a heterogeneous network architecture including a common tool, a common platform, and a common access. In particular, software-defined radio technologies are used to develop a multiservice user terminal to access different wireless networks. The common platform for various wireless networks is based on a wireless-supporting IPv6 network. A basic access network, separated from other wireless access networks, is used as a means for wireless system discovery, signaling, and paging. A proof-of-concept experimental demonstration system is available

Distributed mobility management with mobile Host Identity Protocol proxy

The architectural evolution from hierarchical to flatter networks creates new challenges such as single points of failure and bottlenecks, non-optimal routing paths, scalability problems, and long handover delays. The cellular networks have been hierarchical so that they are largely built on centralized functions based on which their handover mechanisms have been built. They need to be redesigned and/or carefully optimized. The mobility extension to Host Identity Protocol (HIP) proxy, mobile HIP Proxy (MHP), provides a seamless and secure handover for the Mobile Host in the hierarchical network. However, the MHP cannot ensure the same handover performance in flatter network because the MHP has also utilized the features offered by the hierarchical architecture. This paper extends the MHP to distributed mobile HIP proxy (DMHP). The performance evaluation of the DMHP in comparison to MHP and other similar mobility solutions demonstrates that DMHP does indeed perform well in the flatter networks. Moreover, the DMHP supports both efficient multi-homing and handover management for many mobile hosts at the same time to the same new point of attachment