Novel authentication and key agreement protocol for low processing power and systems resource requirements in portable communications systems

Digital portable communications systems (PCS) use cryptographic security techniques to provide privacy to traffic and to prevent fraudulent use of the system resources. Both secret-key and public-key cryptographic protocols are available to provide security to PCS. We present a new protocol, which combines secret-key and public-key techniques. This hybrid protocol has the advantages over the other conventional protocols of not having to maintain a database of secret keys in the PCS networks, and not having to perform the complex and time consuming calculations at the time of authentication in the portables.