PSMECS: A provably secure ID-based communication in mobile edge computing

Human-centered systems play an important role in the modern world, for example, driverless car, autonomous and smart vehicles, drones, and robotics. The internet of things environment demands a faster real-time response depending on the applications processed in a particular duration. Mobile edge computing (MEC) allows a user to get a real-time response as compared with cloud computing (CC), although ensuring a number of security attributes in MEC environment remains challenging. In this article, a protocol is designed to achieve mutual authentication, anonymous communication, and security against traceability, as these are very crucial factors to ensure the security of data and user's privacy. Moreover, the proposed scheme ensures mutual authentication between a mobile user and an edge server along with the user's anonymity and untraceability. The proof of security and evaluation of performance of the scheme validates that it ensures security attributes and improves efficiency in terms of communication and computation overheads.