Error-Correcting Message Authentication for 5G

Message Authentication Codes (MACs) used in today's wireless communication standards are not capable of correcting errors which may occur during transmission. If MAC verification fails, the message is typically discarded and a retransmission is requested. Re-transmissions waste energy and increase average packet latency. Excessive re-transmissions may lead to network congestion. In this paper, we introduce a new MAC, MAC-C, which efficiently combines integrity protection with single-bit error correction and provide a detailed quantitative analysis of its security. The efficiency of MAC-C makes it a good candidate for simpler 5G radio types and use cases with constrained resources such as Machine Type Communications (MTC).