Security in device-to-device communications: a survey

Othmane Nait Hamoud, Tayeb Kenaza, Yacine Challal
2018 IET Networks  
Device-to-Device (D2D) communication is a promising technology for the next generation mobile communication networks (5G). Indeed, it is expected to allow high throughput, reduce communication delays and reduce energy consumption and traffic load. D2D technology will enhance the capacity and the performance of traditional cellular networks. Security issues must be considered in all type of communication, especially when it comes to wireless communication. In this paper, we propose taxonomy
more » ... on the review of recent works which have addressed the security issues in D2D communications. I. INTRODUCTION The rapid growth in the number of mobile internet subscribers has fostered the emergence of various new applications and services. This implies an exponential growth of mobile data traffic. Consequently, a huge burden is imposed for the cellular infrastructure in terms of spectrum utilization, overall throughput, communications delays and energy consumption. Expecting to be one of the technology components of the evolving 5G architecture, Device-to-Device (D2D) communications is promising solution to offload the cellular infrastructure from the traffic encumbrance. Indeed, D2D communications approach allows device users (device such Smartphone, tablet, etc.) to establish direct communication links with each other without passing through an access point or a core network of a cellular infrastructure. The main difference between the expected 5G and the first four generations is that 5G is heading towards device-centric network architecture contrary to the previous generations which have been network centric. In 5G, device user is expected to actively perform operations which were earlier being performed by the network such as storage, relaying and content delivery [15] . Academicians, industrials, and standard institutions have paid considerable attention for D2D communications technology. In academia, different surveys have been proposed in the literature [1, 2, 15] in which, different fields related to this technology was addressed (node discovery, interference and radio resource management, use cases and requirements, power control, system architecture and design, etc.). In industry, Qualcomm has developed FlashLinQ [3] to implement for the first time D2D communication as subsystem underlying cellular networks to enable direct communications among proximity devices in different scenarios (content sharing, gaming, social networking, etc.). FlashLinQ was designed to work in licensed cellular band based on Time Division Duplexing-Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access technology (TDD-OFDMA) which is the same as LTE-A system, allowing devices to discover neighbors in a large range with high efficiency. The work of standardizing this new paradigm is underway by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) under the proposal Proximity Services (ProSe) [8] which allows enabling direct communication between proximate devices. ProSe combines two types of services, proximity discovery and direct communication. In [4], a brief overview of standardization activities of the 3GPP ProSe in LTE-A is presented. Security issues must be considered in all type of communication, especially when it comes to wireless communication. Despite a very rare works, security in D2D communication is not seriously and well handled in the literature. D2D communications face many security challenges when it will applied to the future 5G systems. II. OVERVIEW OF D2D COMMUNICATIONS Initially, direct communications were introduced in the third generation networks (3G) within the wireless personal network (WPAN) and wireless local area network (WLAN) technologies. These technologies occurred on unlicensed band which didn't provide Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees due to the uncontrollable interference. In spite of the role which can play D2D paradigm to enhance performance of cellular networks, cellular operators did not pay attention to D2D communications because of the limited benefits of local communications services. However, with the growth of traffic due especially to the increasingly popularity of mobile applications based on devices' proximity such as social networking, network gaming, etc., cellular operators are getting attracted towards the D2D technology until its introduction in the fourth generation (4G) through LTE-Direct and FlashLinQ [3] . A. Scenarios and use cases Different scenarios and use cases were proposed by 3GPP in [64] . Depending on the degree of implication of a Cellular Network Operator (CNO) in D2D communications, three typical scenarios and use cases are shown in Figure 1 . Figure1. Typical scenarios and use-cases in D2D communications. 3GPP has proposed D2D communication (ProSe) as an underlay network of existing LTE-A networks [60] . They integrated two new entities: (1) ProSe function which may provide connections between application servers and UEs and handle ProSe related functions (UE registration, UEs discovery, security, etc.) and (2) ProSe application server which serves UEs requesting ProSe services through a logical link. Figure 3 shows simplified network architecture for the ProSe, where the control plane can be ensured in three different levels: UE, RAN and EPC. In the EPS of the 3GPP, ProSe features consists of [61]: (1) ProSe Discovery (ProSe-D), which identifies that ProSeenabled UEs are in proximity using E-UTRA technology (with or without E-UTRAN) or EPC; and (2) ProSe Direct communication (ProSe-DC), which enables establishment of communication paths (using E-UTRAN or WLAN) between two or more ProSe-enabled UEs that are in direct communication range. In the context of Public Safety usage, UEs can establish the communication path directly, regardless of whether they are served by E-UTRAN; and ProSe-DC is facilitated by the use of a ProSe UE-to-Network Relay, acting as a relay between E-UTRAN and UEs.
doi:10.1049/iet-net.2017.0119 fatcat:2abbrcyhkvhshev7mi6qc6ysjm