Securing UAV Flying Ad Hoc Wireless Networks: Authentication Development for Robust Communications.

Area of Science:

• Cybersecurity
• Aerospace Engineering
• Network Security

Background:

• Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly vital in critical operations, necessitating robust communication security.
• Flying Ad Hoc Networks (FANETs) present unique security challenges for intra-UAV and UAV-ground station communications.
• Existing security measures often struggle to balance effectiveness with computational and communication overhead.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel authentication framework for securing UAV communications within FANETs.
• To leverage Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) for enhanced security and efficiency.
• To analyze and categorize existing UAV authentication strategies.

Main Methods:

• Development of a new authentication framework utilizing PUFs for UAV networking.
• Categorization of existing literature on UAV authentication strategies.
• Comparative analysis of the proposed framework against selected studies concerning security and cost.

Main Results:

• The proposed PUF-based authentication framework demonstrates a high level of security against cyber threats.
• Achieved an 18% improvement in communication cost compared to the best-performing existing protocols.
• Lower communication and computation costs were observed in the proposed framework.

Conclusions:

• There is an urgent need for advanced security measures to protect UAV communications.
• The proposed framework offers a secure and cost-effective solution for UAV authentication in FANETs.
• The findings support the sustained effectiveness and broader application of UAVs.