Efficient Authentication for Users Autonomy in Next Generation All-IP Networks

Next Generation Networks (NGNs) provide multimedia services to mobile users through different access networks that facilitate users autonomy. The security architecture of NGNs specifies that a WLAN user must follow a multi-pass Authentication and Key Agreement (AKA) procedure in order to get access to the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) services. This paper proposes an improved one-pass AKA procedure for NGNs that reduces significantly the authentication overhead compared to the multi-pass, without compromising the provided security services. A communication cost analysis is provided that estimates the cost improvement of the proposed one-pass over the multi-pass AKA authentication procedure. The proposed procedure has minimal impact on the network infrastructure and functionality and does not require any changes to the existing authentication protocols.