Secure and efficient uniform handover scheme for LTE-A networks

In this paper, we propose a secure and efficient handover scheme for the Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) networks. The proposed scheme does not trust the basestations because they may be accessible to attackers and operated by subscribers, rather than service providers. First, we propose a registration procedure to enable the base-stations to authenticate and register with the Home Subscriber Server (HSS). Then, we propose a procedure to enable the user equipment (UEs) to authenticate and exchange keys with the Mobility Management Entity (MME) and base-stations. Finally, we propose a secure and fast handover procedure. To reduce the handover latency, the HSS is not involved and the computation overhead on the UEs is very low. The proposed scheme is uniform in the sense that one procedure can be used for all handover scenarios. Our security analysis demonstrates that the proposed scheme can thwart well-known attacks such as impersonation, man in the middle, packet replay, etc. The proposed key agreement procedures can achieve backward/forward secrecy, where attackers cannot derive the past or future session keys. Our performance evaluation results demonstrate that the proposed handover scheme is fast because it needs few computations and exchanges few number of packets. This is important to improve the quality of service, avoid call termination, and service disruption. Moreover, the proposed scheme imposes minimal overhead on the mobile nodes, which is very desirable because these nodes usually have low computational power and energy.