Hardware Implementation-Based Lightweight Privacy- Preserving Authentication Scheme for Internet of Drones Using...

Area of Science:

• Cybersecurity and Network Engineering
• Aerospace and Robotics

Background:

• The Internet of Drones (IoD) is expanding for applications like agriculture and logistics.
• Securing IoD communications is challenging due to open environments, drone mobility, and resource constraints.
• Existing authentication methods are often computationally intensive or lack hardware validation for drones.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a lightweight, privacy-preserving authentication scheme for IoD environments.
• To address the gap in practical, hardware-validated security solutions for resource-constrained drones.
• To bind cryptographic keys to drone hardware using Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs).

Main Methods:

• Proposed a PUF-assisted lightweight authentication scheme binding keys to drone hardware.
• Utilized dynamic pseudo-identities for privacy and SHA-256, AES-256, and XOR for efficient cryptography.
• Implemented and evaluated the scheme through software simulations and hardware deployment on an FPGA.

Main Results:

• Software evaluation showed low communication overhead (708.5 bytes) and computation time (18.87 ms).
• Hardware implementation on FPGA achieved 100 MHz operation with low resource utilization (12.49% LUT) and power consumption (182.5 mW).
• The scheme demonstrated a balance between security, privacy, and efficiency.

Conclusions:

• The PUF-based authentication framework is practical and suitable for real-world IoD constraints.
• Provides a hardware-validated solution for securing next-generation drone networks.
• Offers enhanced security and privacy for drone communications.