Authentication traffics modeling and analysis in next generation wireless networks

Access security is an indispensable component in the future generation wireless networks to enable the trusted communications. During the User Equipment (UE) access procedure, the authentication overhead analysis is able to provide insights in understanding the security management performance. To unify the model for analyzing the authentication traffics under different location management schemes, we introduce the concept location update inter-arrival time. Furthermore, based on the UE's typical behavior, we propose a system model and define the metric number of User Authentication Request (UAR) in SGSN residence time to evaluate the authentication cost. Numerical results are illustrated to show the interaction between the parameters and the performance metrics. The sensitivity of call arrival process and the effects of location management schemes are also discussed. Copyright (C) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.