LIGHTWEIGHT ECC-ELGAMAL APPROACH FOR SECURE D2D COMMUNICATION IN IOT NETWORKS

Abstract

As Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G networks increasingly develop at high rates, a secure and efficient device-to-device (D2D) communication is becoming a highly demanded necessity. Various authentication protocols tend to be very computationally and communication intensive and cannot be used with resource constrained IoT devices. In this work, the author suggests a lightweight authentication protocol based on ECC-ElGamal protocol and ensures confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity during D2D communication with minimal resource use. The protocol allows Non-Transparent Relays (NTRs) to safely communicate session keys with Master Relay Base Stations (MRBS) with elliptic curve scalar multiplications and ElGamal encryption. Security analysis proves that it is resistant to common attacks, such as Man-in-the-Middle (MITM), replay, impersonation, and brute-force attacks. Performance analysis demonstrates that the protocol proposed lowers the computational power and the number of messages exchanged as compared to the conventional RSA-based protocols and this guarantees performance efficiency of devices that have a low power consumption and limited memory. The lightweight architecture of the protocol and periodic key update scheme enables the implementation of large-scale IoT networks. This study offers a solid architecture of safe D2D communications, tradeoffs between high security and efficiency, and preconditions the next-generation improvements through the formal security demonstrations, practical implementation, and integration with new technologies, including blockchain and quantum-safe cryptography.