Secure and effective authentication for 5G networks (SEA-5G) using blockchain

The radical growth of 5G technology revolutionized the field of cellular networks by providing higher data rates up to 10 Gbit/s. Though a 5G network can carry huge data with a higher speed than 4G, it can cover only a shorter province, around 1000 feet which is not even 2% of 4G’s coverage. To ensure reliable 5G signal and connectivity, numerous cell towers are required which inherently results in frequent and increased authentication when User Equipment moves between cells. Therefore, there is a critical need for a fast and frequent authentication mechanism. Existing 4G authentication protocols cannot handle frequent authentications of 5G effectively. Blockchain technology with its security features can be considered as a promising technology that can be effectively utilized to evade redundant authentications. Therefore, an effective and secure authentication scheme by completely utilizing Blockchain security features has been proposed. The proposed methodology works in two phases, the first with a novel optimized consensus algorithm (UE-AP EpBFT) to improve the Authentication Rate. Second, the reduction of the authentication frequency by utilizing the authentication results stored in UE-AP Blockchain. The proposed scheme has been implemented in the Hyperledger-Fabric framework and the results are analysed completely to prove the efficiency of the proposed scheme. Further, the proposed system outperforms the existing 5G process with a decrease in average Processing Time (PT) by 61.49% and an increase in the average Authentication Rate by 56.73%.