Anonymous channel and authentication in wireless communications

In this paper, we propose a scheme for providing anonymous channel, service in wireless communications. By this service, many interesting applications, such as electronic elections, anonymous group discussions, with user identification confidential can be easily realized. No one can trace a sender's identification and no one but the authority centre can distinguish an anonymous message from a normal message when a user uses the anonymous channel. The user anonymity in our scheme is neither based on any trusted authority nor on the cooperation of all potential senders. Our scheme can be easily applied to existing wireless systems, such as GSM and CDPD, without changing their underlying structures. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.