Authentication of mobile users in personal communication system

The logical structure of a personal communication system (PCS) is divided into three layers: intelligent layer, transmission layer and access layer. The authentication of mobile users is realized in the intelligent layer. The database structure of the PCS, different from the existing systems such as GSM and IS-41 etc., is centralized. Therefore the authentication schemes used in existing systems cannot meet the requirement of the PCS. In this paper, a user authentication scheme is proposed according to the database structure in the intelligent layer of the PCS. Compared with the existing authentication schemes, it has the following properties: (1) The authentication of mobile users in the visited network is not controlled by its home network. The traffic load of location update and interrogation is greatly reduced. (2) The authentication protocol adopts a public key/secret key hybrid algorithm. (3) When the data transmission network adopts PSPDN or common channel signaling network, the scheme still has very high security.