A Secure Authentication Scheme for Satellite-Terrestrial Networks

The low earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations, with their advantages of low latency and high maneuverability, are widely applied in various systems and are highly suitable for communication systems. However, there are still numerous security vulnerabilities present in the communication between LEO satellites and the ground. In the recent literature, there are elegant studies conducted on authentication protocols for LEO satellite networks. Inspired by the previous works, we present a secure authentication and key management protocol for the LEO-terrestrial networks by elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). Our scheme optimizes the shortcomings of previous work, significantly alleviates the computational burden on both users and servers sides, and provides a novel solution for session key updates. The verification of the security for the interaction involves the application of both informal and formal analysis approaches. Through the comprehensive analysis and simulation, it is demonstrated that the proposed work satisfies the perfect forward security, resists all known attacks, and reduces the execution time and communication cost. Additionally, our work exhibits versatility in its applicability to a diverse range of industrial scenarios with its practical significance.