Security protocol design against malicious attacks in 4G LTE wireless systems

Abstract

A seamless and secure handover is always one important goal of cellular network design. The handover scheme of the current Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile network is complex due to the presence of two different types of base stations. In LTE communication systems, a normal base station is referred to as an eNodeB (eNB). In addition to it, another kind of base station called Home eNodeB (HeNB) was also introduced. What increases the level of complexity of the system is the fact that HeNB cannot directly communicate with eNB. Therefore, in the network, different handover scenarios involving a HeNB have to be considered carefully and treated separately, which results in a handover scheme with many different scenarios. Besides, since key chain is used in the handover system, the LTE handover scheme is found to be lack of backward security. Considering above mentioned facts, a proxy signature-based handover scheme is proposed in this project to achieve a both secure and simple handover system. The proposed scheme is based on the Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) algorithm, which makes the computational cost of the scheme smaller compared to other handover schemes with similar levels of security and complexity.