Suitability analysis of existing and new authentication methods for future 3GPP Evolved Packet Core

摘要

The fourth generation of 3GPP networks is evolving toward the realization of true global mobile broadband services. This stimulates the appearance of new applications, such as remote sensing and controlling services running on resource-constrained wireless devices, but also comes along with new challenges regarding performance and cost of the whole system, involving the requirement for lightweight security services. This paper analyzes the suitability of a recently developed protocol, i.e., the Host Identity Protocol using Diet Exchange extended with Authentication and Key Agreement, as a new option providing lightweight unified network access service in 3GPP Evolved Packet Core and replacing Internet Key Exchange version 2 with EAP-AKA. The proposed technology is compared with five other Layer-3 authentication methods under security, performance, deployment and functionality related criteria and trade-offs of the alternatives are analyzed. The results show that it is worth using this recent authentication method in scenarios where low performance overhead and support of extra functionalities such as multiaccess capabilities are important. Consequently, the concept of a new secure data tunneling option is proposed for these scenarios for distributed Evolved Packet Core.