A novel advanced identity management scheme for seamless handoff in 4G wireless networks

Services provided across 4G networks are mainly characterized by ubiquity and convergence. Thus, a user needs to be identified and authenticated to different serving networks and service providers. The definition of different identities for the same user would be hardly manageable since it would introduce identity confusion and heavy management procedures, especially in the overlapping zones. Therefore, unique identifer assignment and management techniques in heterogeneous environments will be a must. In this paper, we introduce a new syntax for the Temporal Mobile Subscriber identity (TMSI) and develop the associated secure identity management process. We show that our scheme, called Advanced Identity Management (AIM) guarantees mutual authentication, privacy, and tracking avoidance, which are of primary importance in 4G networks.