Analytical model for authentication transmission overhead between entities in mobile networks

This paper analyses the authentication and key agreement (AKA) protocol for UMTS mobile networks. In this research the current authentication protocol has been enhanced by reducing the network traffic, signalling message between entities. Consequently the bottleneck at authentication centre is avoided. This is achieved by reducing the number of messages between mobile and authentication centre, then reducing the authentication times, and setup time as well as improving authentication efficiency as shown in analytical analysis and simulation results. In this paper dynamic length (L) for an array for authentication vector (AV) has been proposed. This requires designing a new technique to predict the numbers of records in AV in each authentication data request depending on the arrival rate of authentication events and residence time of the mobile station (MS) in VLR/SGSN. The analytical and simulation study have been carried out to explore the impact of dynamic length for authentication vector on the signalling traffic in mobile network. To validate the simulation results in this research work, the results have been compared with the analytical results and fill match has been achieved.