Our research focuses on authentication, one major fundament for secure communication aside of confidentiality and integrity, that is not solved satisfactorily for MTC. Historically, the GSM communication standard featured security algorithms (and specifically authentication mechanisms) that soon turned out to be poor. Since the introduction of the A5 encryption algorithms, numerous exploitable protocol weaknesses have been revealed rendering GSM an insecure communication channel. The follow-up standards UMTS and LTE tried to improve the GSM shortcomings emphasizing strong cryptographic authentication and secure channel protocols. Unfortunately, many up to date 4G modem implementations still allow bypassing security rather easily. Furthermore, authentication protocols are largely centralized and geared towards mobile network operators, making them hard to apply to modern LAN scenarios.

In contrast to currently standardized authentication protocols that are managed centrally, we investigate schemes that support decentralized architectures with local decisions for authentication (on factory-floor level). The focus is spatio-temporal access control that unifies physical layer joint synchronization and localization methods with higher layer perimeter based authentication. Such schemes are specifically suitable for MTC as they require low administrative overhead, they simplify the management of mobile clients in industrial settings, and they leverage a physically interpretable trusted perimeter.