A Secure Group-based Authentication Protocol for Machine-type Communication in LTE/LTE-A Networks

Internet of thing is a world-wide recognized trend that is gaining popularity incredibly fast. There are many applications for this technology and one of the most important ones is Machine-type Communication (MTC). MTC is a form of data communication which can involve many entities in order to sense the environment, while do not need the human interference. Lately some concerns have been raised that Internet of thing is developing rapidly without appropriate consideration of the profound security challenges involved, while at the same time with growing number of devices the need for simultaneous access of MTC devices to LTE/LTE-A network arises. Growing number of MTC devices accessing LTE/LTE-A network, may cause some urgent issues, such as congestion and overload network. In this paper, we introduce a secure group-base authentication protocol for MTC devices in LTE/LTE-A network. Our scheme does not only simultaneously authenticates a group of MTC devices but also provides robust security. Performance evaluations and formal verification using ProVerif show that our scheme is secure and practical in term of communication and computation overhead compared to previous researches.