A Lightweight Key Agreement and Authentication Scheme for Satellite-Communication Systems

Mobile satellite communication is becoming a crucial component for broadcast and broadband coverage in professional, commercial, military and emergency scenarios. Mobile devices and network control center (NCC) are the basic components of Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO) satellites which communicate with each other with the help of gateways. The communication between these components needs high security. The various existing protocols for the environment of mobile satellite communication are insecure against numerous attacks and can be easily attacked by an adversary. So, there is an indispensable requirement of a reliable protocol which can offer efficient and secure communication for mobile satellite system. Therefore, a robust key agreement authentication scheme for mobile satellite environment is proposed in this article. The proposed protocol is developed according to the major security demands in the satellite communication networks. Our protocol provides mutual-authentication, session-key agreement and correct notion of user anonymity. The performance analysis for evaluation shows that the storage, communication and computation cost of the proposed protocol is less than many of existing protocols. Moreover, our protocol offers additional security features than that are available in the existing protocols. Hence, our protocol offers a secure authentication and key agreement for mobile satellite systems.