Security-Enhanced Lightweight Authentication Key-Agreement Protocol for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Communication

Unmanned aerial vehicles have been widely employed in recent years owing to their remarkable features such as low environmental requirements and high survivability, and a new tendency towards networking, intelligence, and collaboration has emerged. The realization of these novel capabilities require...

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Main Authors: Zhoucan He, Yilong Zheng, Sisi Chen, Zhongze Du, Shuyuan Liu, Kailong Zhang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2025-04-01
Series:Applied Sciences
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/15/9/4680
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author Zhoucan He
Yilong Zheng
Sisi Chen
Zhongze Du
Shuyuan Liu
Kailong Zhang
author_facet Zhoucan He
Yilong Zheng
Sisi Chen
Zhongze Du
Shuyuan Liu
Kailong Zhang
author_sort Zhoucan He
collection DOAJ
description Unmanned aerial vehicles have been widely employed in recent years owing to their remarkable features such as low environmental requirements and high survivability, and a new tendency towards networking, intelligence, and collaboration has emerged. The realization of these novel capabilities requires a secure and efficient wireless communication channel; however, it is vulnerable to eavesdropping, forgery, and manipulation by attackers. Therefore, ensuring the security of the wireless communication between unmanned aerial vehicles and ground stations is an urgent issue. The traditional solution to this problem is to design an authenticated key-agreement protocol between unmanned aerial vehicles and ground stations. However, an analysis of existing representative methods has shown that these methods are computationally expensive and difficult to implement in resource-intensive aerial vehicles. Furthermore, existing key-agreement systems are highly dependent on the security of temporary session information. When the temporary session information is stolen, the attacker can obtain the session key for the current communication and perform information theft attacks. Therefore, a security-enhanced lightweight authenticated key-agreement protocol for unmanned aerial vehicles’ communication is proposed in this study. We present a low-computational-cost agreement method that can achieve secure key agreement in cases of temporary session information leakage. Both theoretical analysis and experimental verification show that our proposed protocol has superior security properties and lower computational costs than representative protocols.
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publishDate 2025-04-01
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series Applied Sciences
spelling doaj-art-5b6037db7069474ca5b9fd1539e94c7c2025-08-20T03:52:56ZengMDPI AGApplied Sciences2076-34172025-04-01159468010.3390/app15094680Security-Enhanced Lightweight Authentication Key-Agreement Protocol for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle CommunicationZhoucan He0Yilong Zheng1Sisi Chen2Zhongze Du3Shuyuan Liu4Kailong Zhang5School of Software, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Chang’an Campus, Xi’an 710129, ChinaInstitute of Electronic Engineering, China Academy of Engineering Physics, Mianyang 621000, ChinaInstitute of Electronic Engineering, China Academy of Engineering Physics, Mianyang 621000, ChinaInstitute of Electronic Engineering, China Academy of Engineering Physics, Mianyang 621000, ChinaInstitute of Electronic Engineering, China Academy of Engineering Physics, Mianyang 621000, ChinaSchool of Software, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Chang’an Campus, Xi’an 710129, ChinaUnmanned aerial vehicles have been widely employed in recent years owing to their remarkable features such as low environmental requirements and high survivability, and a new tendency towards networking, intelligence, and collaboration has emerged. The realization of these novel capabilities requires a secure and efficient wireless communication channel; however, it is vulnerable to eavesdropping, forgery, and manipulation by attackers. Therefore, ensuring the security of the wireless communication between unmanned aerial vehicles and ground stations is an urgent issue. The traditional solution to this problem is to design an authenticated key-agreement protocol between unmanned aerial vehicles and ground stations. However, an analysis of existing representative methods has shown that these methods are computationally expensive and difficult to implement in resource-intensive aerial vehicles. Furthermore, existing key-agreement systems are highly dependent on the security of temporary session information. When the temporary session information is stolen, the attacker can obtain the session key for the current communication and perform information theft attacks. Therefore, a security-enhanced lightweight authenticated key-agreement protocol for unmanned aerial vehicles’ communication is proposed in this study. We present a low-computational-cost agreement method that can achieve secure key agreement in cases of temporary session information leakage. Both theoretical analysis and experimental verification show that our proposed protocol has superior security properties and lower computational costs than representative protocols.https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/15/9/4680unmanned aerial vehicleskey-agreement protocolsecurity analysis
spellingShingle Zhoucan He
Yilong Zheng
Sisi Chen
Zhongze Du
Shuyuan Liu
Kailong Zhang
Security-Enhanced Lightweight Authentication Key-Agreement Protocol for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Communication
Applied Sciences
unmanned aerial vehicles
key-agreement protocol
security analysis
title Security-Enhanced Lightweight Authentication Key-Agreement Protocol for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Communication
title_full Security-Enhanced Lightweight Authentication Key-Agreement Protocol for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Communication
title_fullStr Security-Enhanced Lightweight Authentication Key-Agreement Protocol for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Communication
title_full_unstemmed Security-Enhanced Lightweight Authentication Key-Agreement Protocol for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Communication
title_short Security-Enhanced Lightweight Authentication Key-Agreement Protocol for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Communication
title_sort security enhanced lightweight authentication key agreement protocol for unmanned aerial vehicle communication
topic unmanned aerial vehicles
key-agreement protocol
security analysis
url https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/15/9/4680
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