Privacy-Preserving Lightweight LoRaWAN Authentication Protocol for IoT Applications

Security and privacy are two primary concerns in critical applications within Internet of Things (IoT) environments. The long-range wide-area network (LoRaWAN) protocol facilitates long-range communication for battery-powered end devices in IoT and has gained widespread adoption among both individua...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE internet of things journal Vol. 12; no. 20; pp. 42790 - 42802
Main Authors: Akram, Muhammad Arslan, Mian, Adnan Noor, Biswas, Arnab Kumar, Kumari, Saru, Chen, Chien-Ming
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Piscataway IEEE 15.10.2025
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subjects:
Authentication
Authentication protocol
Authentication protocols
Cryptography
Cybersecurity
energy consumption
Energy efficiency
information security
Internet of Things
Internet of Things (IoT) applications
Logic gates
long-range wide-area network (LoRaWAN) security
LoRaWAN
Network servers
Performance evaluation
Privacy
Protocol
Security
Servers
Threat evaluation
Wide area networks
Wireless sensor networks
ISSN:2327-4662, 2327-4662
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Security and privacy are two primary concerns in critical applications within Internet of Things (IoT) environments. The long-range wide-area network (LoRaWAN) protocol facilitates long-range communication for battery-powered end devices in IoT and has gained widespread adoption among both individuals and industries. To foster trust and facilitate its use, ensuring security and privacy for data collected by end devices is essential. User authentication and key establishment protocols play a pivotal role in this regard. While existing authentication schemes in the literature are unsuitable for LoRaWAN networks, this article proposes an energy-efficient LoRaWAN authentication protocol for privacy preservation in IoT applications. Through formal verification using the random oracle model (ROM) and automated validation of Internet security protocols and applications (AVISPA) tool, we demonstrate our protocol's resilience against common attacks, including replay, man-in-the-middle, and impersonation threats. Performance evaluations reveal significant advantages over existing schemes: 48% faster computation (0.1953 ms versus 0.3647 ms baseline), 24% lower communication overhead (2398 bits versus 3168 bits), and 44% energy savings (1.27 mJ versus 2.27 mJ) over state-of-the-art protocols. These improvements, combined with enhanced security features, such as resistance to sensor capture and stolen device attacks, make our protocol particularly suitable for practical IoT deployments in smart agriculture and industrial monitoring systems where both security and energy efficiency are paramount. The balance of strong security guarantees and low operational overhead represents a significant advance in LoRaWAN authentication mechanisms.
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ISSN:2327-4662
2327-4662
DOI:10.1109/JIOT.2025.3593886