Chengbin Huang

Advancements in Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) technology facilitate ubiquitous network access for users, whereas satellite-based Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) offers a viable solution for long-distance quantum key exchange in scenarios lacking terrestrial network infrastructure. This study explores the feasibility and practical utility of integrating NTN technology with satellite-based QKD and proposes a novel quantum-enhanced security framework for next-generation space–terrestrial networks. We have developed and deployed the first-of-its-kind 5G-enabled (fifth generation mobile communication) NTN prototype system leveraging satellite-based QKD key encryption. This system comprises a quantum satellite system, a communication satellite system, a 5G network infrastructure, and end-to-end encryption/decryption modules, aiming to validate the feasibility and usability of the proposed quantum-encrypted NTN security framework. Comprehensive tests and performance evaluations were carried out on the testbed constructed based on this prototype system, which collected critical Quality of Experience (QoE) metrics, including Round-Trip Time (RTT) and jitter, during user-plane ping measurements. Experimental results demonstrate that the integration of quantum encryption capabilities incurs an RTT overhead of 5 ms (0.75%), a necessary trade-off for systems incorporating supplementary quantum-encrypted transmission. Concurrently, the deployment of Virtual Private Network (VPN) infrastructure mitigates network jitter by 50%. These results hold critical theoretical and practical implications for the development of next-generation NTN security frameworks enabled by satellite-based QKD.

AKMA (Application Authentication and Key Management) is a technology that 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) provides security capabilities to 5G (5th generation wireless systems) as a third party. At present, 3GPP has finalized the publication of AKMA specifications in Release 16 and is developing AKMA phase 2 in Release 18. At the current stage, it is recommended to conduct enhanced research on AKMA to solve some security problems of AKMA. This paper first briefly describes and analyzes the principles and technological development process of two mainstream application authentication technologies GBA (Generic Bootstrapping Architecture) and AKMA, and analyzes the advantages and limitations of these two technologies. Secondly, we also analyze the signaling loss caused by the AKMA process conducted independently by different application servers in the same trust domain, and the security risk caused by the long-term use of the same application key by AKMA users. Finally, this paper proposes solutions to AKMA performance and security problems from the perspective of security, universality, and performance impact.