A unified end-to-end security scheme for machine-type communication in LTE networks

With a wide range of potential applications, machine-type communication (MTC) or machine to machine (M2M) communications is gaining a tremendous interest among mobile network operators and research groups. MTC is standardized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), which has been regarded as the promising solution facilitating M2M communications. One of research challenges in MTC is security, if the security is not well addressed, all applications involving MTC cannot be put into market. In the latest standard, the 3GPP proposes a novel scenario for MTC, where MTC server is located outside of the operator domain. However, the connection between 3GPP core network and MTC server in this scenario is insecure, as a result, there are distrustful relationships among MTC device, core network and MTC server. To resolve this problem, we propose an end-to-end security scheme for MTC based on the proxy-signature technique in this paper. Specifically, both the MTC device and the MTC server can establish a strong trustful relationship with each other through using the proxy signatures issued by the core network. Through security analysis, we conclude that the proposed scheme can achieve the security goals, and prevent the various security threats. In addition, performance evaluation also demonstrates its efficiency in terms of operational cost during authentication.