Virtual Private Mobile Network with Multiple Gateways for B5G Location Privacy

TL;DR

This paper proposes a routing algorithm for a virtual private mobile network in B5G scenarios that balances data rates across gateways to enhance user location privacy while maintaining network performance.

Contribution

It introduces a novel routing algorithm that maximizes network rate while ensuring equal data distribution across gateways to protect user location privacy.

Findings

The routing algorithm effectively balances gateway usage.

Enhanced location privacy compared to traditional routing.

Performance is maintained in both single-hop and multi-hop transmissions.

Abstract

In a beyond-5G (B5G) scenario, we consider a virtual private mobile network (VPMN), i.e., a set of user equipments (UEs) directly communicating in a device-to-device (D2D) fashion, and connected to the cellular network by multiple gateways. The purpose of the VPMN is to hide the position of the VPMN UEs to the mobile network operator (MNO). We investigate the design and performance of packet routing inside the VPMN. First, we note that the routing that maximizes the rate between the VPMN and the cellular network leads to an unbalanced use of the gateways by each UE. In turn, this reveals information on the location of the VPMN UEs. Therefore, we derive a routing algorithm that maximizes the VPMN rate, while imposing for each UE the same data rate at each gateway, thus hiding the location of the UE. We compare the performance of the resulting solution, assessing the location privacy achieved by the VPMN, and considering both the case of single hop and multihop in the transmissions from the UEs to the gateways.