A Secure Group-Oriented Device-to-Device Authentication Protocol for 5G Wireless Networks

With the rising demand for the digital world and the emergence of new application scenarios, 5G wireless networks have become the key enabler of a new era. As one of the promising technologies, group-oriented device-to-device (D2D) communications are expected to improve spectral efficiency and reduce latency. However, to negotiate a group session key securely and effectively has become an urgent problem. In this paper, we propose an authentication and key agreement protocol, which merges the advantages of certificateless public key cryptography (CL-PKC) and elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), to guarantee secure and anonymous D2D group communications in 5G cellular networks. The security evaluation by using the Burrows-Abadi-Needham logic (BAN Logic) and the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) shows that the security goal can be achieved. Furthermore, based on extensive simulation experiments, we evaluate the performance of the proposed solution in terms of computational costs, communication costs, and energy costs. The results demonstrate that the proposal is lightweight and efficient.