One-pass GPRS and IMS authentication procedure for UMTS

Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) supports Internet protocol (IP) multimedia services through IP multimedia core network subsystem (IMS). Since the IMS information is delivered through the general packet radio service (GPRS) transport network, a UMTS mobile station (MS) must activate GPRS packet data protocol (PDP) context before it can register to the IMS network. In the Third-Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) specifications, authentication is performed at both the GPRS and the IMS networks before an MS can access the IMS services. We observe that many steps in this 3GPP "two-pass" authentication procedure are identical. Based on our observation, this paper proposes an one-pass authentication procedure that only needs to perform GPRS authentication. At the IMS level, authentication is implicitly performed in IMS registration. Our approach may save up to 50% of the IMS registration/authentication traffic, as compared with the 3GPP two-pass procedure. We formally prove that the one-pass procedure correctly authenticate the IMS users.