UAV-Based Privacy-Preserved Trustworthy Seamless Service Agility for NextG Cellular Networks

Area of Science:

• Telecommunications Engineering
• Network Security
• Mobile Computing

Background:

• Next-generation cellular networks (4G/5G) aim for enhanced service quality, security, and cooperation, especially during network failures or disasters.
• Current 4G and 5G standards lack robust security and privacy features for seamless inter-operator service mobility, hindering cooperation.
• Establishing trust relationships is complex in the presence of attackers, further complicating secure service provisioning.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-assisted framework for trustworthy user-agility support.
• To enable secure and seamless service migration in a zero-trust environment, even under stressful network conditions.
• To address the limitations of current standards in facilitating inter-operator cooperation and mobility.

Main Methods:

• Development of a UAV-assisted framework incorporating temporal authentication-authority delegation and proxying.
• Implementation of the framework on the srsRAN open-source 4G/5G software stack.
• Experimental testing to evaluate the framework's effectiveness and efficiency in service migration.

Main Results:

• The proposed framework successfully facilitates trustworthy seamless service migration between heterogeneous service provider networks.
• Experimental results demonstrate the framework's effectiveness and efficiency in enabling secure mobility.
• The system supports preservice, all-party mutual authentication in a zero-trust setting.

Conclusions:

• The UAV-assisted framework provides a viable solution for secure and trustworthy service migration in next-generation cellular networks.
• This approach enhances network resilience and cooperation, particularly during disruptions or in adversarial environments.
• The framework overcomes existing security and privacy challenges in inter-operator mobility.