A Study on Security Management Architecture for Personal Networks

The authors have studied the security management architecture for Personal Networks (PN). The main feature of the proposed architecture is to exploit a trusted cellular system, namely, an IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem), to provide security functions for PNs over open networks like the Internet. They also proposed two security functions to solve security issues for a PN, PE ID and Key Assignment (PIKA) function and a PN Key Sharing (PNKS) function. The PIKA function assigns an ID and key to non IMS–compliant devices (Peer Equipment: PE) to authenticate the user of the PE with the assistance of the IMS–compliant terminal (User Equipment: UE). The PNKS function makes it possible for PEs to share a common cipher key (PN Key) in a PN, which is used to protect a PN against eavesdropping on application data.