UGHA: Uniform group-based handover authentication for MTC within E-UTRAN in LTE-A networks

Machine Type Communication (MTC) as one of the most important wireless communication technologies in the future wireless communication, has become the new business growth point of mobile communication network. It is a key point to achieve seamless handovers within Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-UTRAN) for a large number of MTC devices in order to support mobility in the Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A) networks. When a good deal of MTC devices simultaneously roam from a base station to another, the current handover mechanisms suggested by the third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) require several handover signaling interactions, which could cause the signaling load over the network nodes. Besides, several distinct handover procedures are proposed for different mobility scenarios, which will increase the system complexity. In this paper, we propose a simple and secure uniform group-based handover authentication scheme for a lot of MTC devices based on the multi-signature and aggregate message authentication codes (AMAC) techniques, which is to fit in with all of the mobility scenarios in the LTE-A networks. Compared with the current 3GPP standards, our scheme can achieve a simple authentication process with robust security protection, and thus avoid signaling congestion.