Fine-Grained Anonymous Access for Satellite Communication Using Zero Knowledge Proof

Satellite communication (SC) is an indispensable component of future communication systems due to its extensive coverage and flexibility. In this work, we investigate the fine-grained anonymous access technique, which not only ensures user equipments (UEs) privacy in the open SC environment but also enables satellites to enforce fine-grained access policies with low overhead. Firstly, we design a Merkle forest based framework that facilitates efficient UE attribute data synchronization, leveraging the broadcasting capability of satellites. Subsequently, we construct a zero-knowledge based protocol for UE authentication, key agreement, and handover in SC. The analysis demonstrates the protocol's resilience against prevalent attacks, and simulation results validate its practicality.