Design and Analysis of the Key Management Mechanism in Evolved Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service

3GPP introduced the key management mechanism (KMM) in evolved multimedia broadcast/multicast service (eMBMS) to provide forward security and backward security for multicast contents. In this paper, we point out that KMM may lead to frequent rekeying and re-authentication issues due to eMBMS's characteristics: 1) massive group members; 2) dynamic group topology; and 3) unexpected wireless disconnections. Such issues expose extra load for both user equipment (UE) terminals and mobile operators. It seems prolonging the rekeying interval is an intuitive solution to minimizing the impact of the issues. However, a long rekeying interval is not considered the best operational solution due to revenue loss of content providers. This paper quantifies the tradeoff between the load of the UEs and the operators as well as the revenue loss of the content providers. Moreover, we emphasize how essential this rekeying interval has impacts on the problems. Using our proposed tradeoff model, the operators can specify a suitable rekeying interval to best balance the interest between the above three parties. The tradeoff model is validated by extensive simulations and is demonstrated to be an effective approach for the tradeoff analysis and optimization on eMBMS.