SEHAP: Secure and Efficient Handover Authentication Protocol in LEO Satellite Non-Terrestrial Networks

LEO satellite non-terrestrial networks (NTN) utilize satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to dynamically establish global communication service and own significant promise. The dynamic nature of LEO satellite NTN necessities efficient handover authentication protocols. However existing schemes cannot be directly applied in LEO satellite NTN because of their low efficiency and security. To address these problems, we propose a handover authentication protocol to quickly and securely authenticate the user’s identity during the handover process. In our scheme, we incorporate an implicit session-bound random challenge to facilitate mutual authentication and key agreement between the User Equipments (UEs) and satellites. To improve authentication efficiency, we propose a batch handover mechanism to transfer the necessary security contexts, largely reducing the handover authentication cost. We verify our protocol’s security using BAN logic and Tamarin prover. The performance evaluation shows that SEHAP outperforms other schemes in both communication and computational efficiency in LEO satellite NTN.