Multi-layer Authentication and Key Agreement Protocol for Secured Data Transmission in Cloud-RAN

The rapid increase in global data traffic increases the load and insecurity at the present radio access network architecture. This limitation of the present network leads to redesign the base station architecture. The centralized/cloud radio access network (C-RAN) technology consider being an alternative solution for the next-generation base station. This architecture performs a centralized processing and controlling activity at central location instead of the distributed processing as in traditional BS. As the C-RAN has centralized and collaborative processing, it has the capability to overcome many security challenges and proved itself to be a secured, energy and cost efficient architecture for the next generation cellular network. Different types of threats and attacks are possible at different layers of C-RAN. In this paper, we have proposed a multilayer authentication and key agreement protocol (ML-AKA) for securing all layers of C-RAN to establish an end to end connection between the user entity (UE). This proposed protocol is to authenticate and validated by AVISPA and the simulation result shows that the proposed ML-AKA protocol reduces the chance of attacks to a greater extent.