A new scalable lightweight grouping proof protocol for RFID systems

Abstract

Radio-frequency Identification (RFID) grouping proof protocol is widely used in medical healthcare industry, trans-portation industry, crime forensics and so on，it is a research focus in the field of information security. The RFID grouping proof protocol is to prove that some tags belong to the same group and exist simultaneously. To improve the applicability of the RFID grouping proof protocol in low cost tag applications, this paper proposes a new scalable lightweight RFID grouping proof protocol. Tags in the proposed protocol only generate pseudorandom numbers and execute exclusive-or(XOR) opera-tions. An anti-collision algorithm based on adaptive 4-ary pruning query tree(A4PQT) is used to identify the response message of tags. Updates to secret information in tags are kept synchronized with the verifier during the entire grouping proof process. Based on these innovations, the proposed protocol resolves the scalability issue for low-cost tag systems and improves the efficiency and security of the authentication that is generated by the grouping proof. Compared with other state-of-the art pro-tocols, it is shows that the proposed protocol requires lower tag-side computational complexity, thereby achieving an effective balance between protocol security and efficiency.