Privacy-aware secure region-based handover for small cell networks in 5G-enabled mobile communication

The 5G mobile communication network provides seamless communication between users and service providers and promises to achieve several stringent requirements, such as seamless mobility and massive connectivity. Although 5G can offer numerous benefits, security and privacy issues must be addressed. For example, the inclusion of small cell networks (SCN) into 5G brings the network closer to the connected users, providing a better quality of services (QoS), resulting in a significant increase in the number of Handover procedures (HO), which will affect the security, latency and efficiency of the network. It is then crucial to design a scheme that supports seamless handovers through a secure authentication process. With this aim, we propose a secure region-based handover scheme in this article that supports seamless connectivity for SCNs in 5G. Our proposed scheme is based on asymmetric-key-based authenticated key exchange and handover protocols that preserve user privacy and network security while providing a seamless region-based handover mechanism and effective membership revocation management. In this context, we introduce three privacy-preserving protocols, i.e., an initial authentication protocol, an intra-region handover protocol and an inter-region handover protocol, for dealing with three communication scenarios. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to consider the privacy and security in both the intra-region and inter-region handover scenarios in 5G communication with practical membership revocation management support. Detailed security and performance analysis of our proposed scheme is presented to show that it is resilient against many security threats, is cost-effective and provides an efficient solution for 5G-enabled mobile communication.