ChebIoD: a Chebyshev polynomial-based lightweight authentication scheme for internet of drones environments

Area of Science:

• Cybersecurity
• Network Security
• Internet of Things (IoT)

Background:

• The Internet of Drones (IoD) faces challenges in secure, robust, and economical identity authentication due to resource limitations.
• Existing authentication methods like blockchain, PUF, and ECC have limitations in IoD environments.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose ChebIoD (Chebyshev polynomial-based mutual authentication and session key generation) as a novel protocol for IoD identity authentication.
• To enhance security, efficiency, and scalability of authentication in IoD systems.

Main Methods:

• Developed ChebIoD protocol integrating post-quantum design, dynamic key management, and formal verification (BAN logic, ROR, AVISPA).
• Conducted enhanced security assessment for side-channel threats and Trusted Authority robustness.
• Performed comparative performance analysis against blockchain, PUF, ECC, and other Chebyshev-based schemes.

Main Results:

• ChebIoD achieves forward and backward secrecy with lightweight polynomial computations, avoiding hard assumptions.
• Demonstrated significant performance gains: up to 63.5% reduction in computation time, 62.4% in communication overhead, and 66.7% in energy consumption.
• Validated practical utility in disaster response, precision agriculture, and urban air mobility.

Conclusions:

• ChebIoD provides an efficient, scalable, and secure mutual authentication and key agreement solution for IoD.
• The protocol offers practical advantages over existing state-of-the-art methods for IoD applications.