A Cryptographic Authentication Protocol for Secure Handover in Next-Generation Cellular Networks

International Journal of Computer Science and Technology | Vol. 6, No. 4, April 2004 | pp. 25–32

DOI: 10.46882/2004/IJCST/000057

Article Type: Research Article

Title: A Cryptographic Authentication Protocol for Secure Handover in Next-Generation Cellular Networks

Names of Authors: Ahmed Al-Mansoor¹, Yuki Tanaka²

Authors’ Affiliations: ¹Department of Computer Science, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; ²Graduate School of Information Science, Kyoto University, Japan

Abstract: Rapid mobility across heterogeneous wireless cellular access points exposes mobile users to hijacking and eavesdropping risks during active handover phases. This paper details a lightweight, secure handover authentication protocol utilizing symmetric elliptic curve cryptography primitives. The proposed framework establishes transient session keys between mobile stations and foreign base stations without requiring continuous validation queries back to the home location register. Our mathematical validation profile confirms that the protocol remains completely secure against replay attacks, man-in-the-middle interventions, and forward-key exposure vectors. Hardware implementation tests conducted on a 32-bit embedded processor showed that the entire authentication computation concludes in 14.5 ms. This represents an execution efficiency gain of 38% over traditional public-key infrastructures, effectively suppressing handover communication dropouts to less than 0.5% under high velocity test scenarios.

Keywords: Mobile Security, Handover Authentication, Elliptic Curve Cryptography, Cellular Networks, Key Management

Manuscript Timeline: Received: January 15, 2004; Revised: February 22, 2004; Accepted: March 15, 2004; Published: April 14, 2004

Citation: Al-Mansoor, A., & Tanaka, Y. (2004). A Cryptographic Authentication Protocol for Secure Handover in Next-Generation Cellular Networks. International Journal of Computer Science and Technology, 6(4), 25–32.

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