In this paper, a new Global System of Mobile
Communications (GSM) authentication protocol is proposed
to improve some drawbacks of the current GSM authentication
protocol for roaming users including: (a) communication
overhead between VLR; (b) huge bandwidth
consumption between VLR and HLR; (c) storage space
overhead in VLR; (d) overloaded in HLR with authentication
of mobile stations; and (e) not supporting bilateral
authentication. The main contribution of this paper is that it
does not only improve the drawbacks listed above but also
fits the needs of roaming users. In addition, the proposed
protocol does not change the existing architecture of GSM,
and the robustness of the proposed protocol is the same as
that of the original GSM, which is based on security algorithms
A3, A5, and A8.
