Cross-Layer Authentication Protocol Design for Ultra-Dense 5G HetNets

Creating a secure environment for communications is becoming a significantly challenging task in 5G Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets) given the stringent latency and high capacity requirements of 5G networks. This is particularly factual knowing that the infrastructure tends to be highly diversified especially with the continuous deployment of small cells. In fact, frequent handovers in these cells introduce unnecessarily recurring authentications leading to increased latency. In this paper, we propose a software-defined wireless network (SDWN)-enabled fast cross-authentication scheme which combines non-cryptographic and cryptographic algorithms to address the challenges of latency and weak security. Initially, the received radio signal strength vectors at the mobile terminal (MT) is used as a fingerprinting source to generate an unpredictable secret key. Subsequently, a cryptographic mechanism based upon the authentication and key agreement protocol by employing the generated secret key is performed in order to improve the confidentiality and integrity of the authentication handover. Further, we propose a radio trusted zone database aiming to enhance the frequent authentication of radio devices which are present in the network. In order to reduce recurring authentications, a given covered area is divided into trusted zones where each zone contains more than one small cell, thus permitting the MT to initiate a single authentication request per zone, even if it keeps roaming between different cells. The proposed scheme is analyzed under different attack scenarios and its complexity is compared with cryptographic and non-cryptographic approaches to demonstrate its security resilience and computational efficiency.