Lightweight Authentication Protocol for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (LA-UAV) for Future Cellular Networks

Muhammad Ali Sattar, Adnan Shahid Khan, Faizan Qamar, Sajid Ullah Khan, Sarra Ayouni, Mohamed Maddeh, Kashif Nisar
dx.doi.org/10.17576/apjitm-2026-1501-24

Abstract

When we draw picture of future world, we would be able to perceive numerous unmanned aerial vehicles and their applications in almost each and every field or domain globally. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) networks are highly susceptible to security threats such as forgery attacks, Adversary-in-the-middle attacks (AiTM), impersonation and replay assaults due to their limited computational capacity and complex external operating environments. They tend to operate in highly dynamic environments for execution of their role and tasks in domains including; civil applications, agriculture, media, logistics and defense etc. Ensuring identity, authentication is paramount for secure communication among drones, with the top priority being the verification of legitimate drones within the network. Traditional authentication mechanisms, such as those relying on username/password or dynamic keys, offer inadequate security levels for UAV networks. This research proposes a Lightweight Multi-factor Authentication system for UAVs (LA-UAV), designed to address the scalability, fault-tolerance, and security requirements of UAV networks. The proposed LA-UAV system minimizes computational and communication overhead while enhancing security. The architecture's effectiveness is validated through a comprehensive analysis of various threats and attacks, demonstrating its robustness in safeguarding UAV networks. Additionally, the LA-UAV protocol enhances security through the integration of features such as time-stamping, 3D location, a one-way hash function, and the Blind-Fold Challenge scheme. To maintain the protocol?s lightweight nature, an ECC-based Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) key agreement technique is employed for secure secret sharing. These lightweight characteristics also improve the scheme?s reliability in multi-hop communication scenarios within 5G and beyond cellular environments. Analytical results demonstrate that LA-UAV offers superior security compared to existing mechanisms, effectively mitigating threats such as man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks, impersonation attacks, and other common vulnerabilities.

keyword

6G, Authentication, UAVs, Drones, Lightweight Multifactor, Impersonation attack.

Area

Network Communication and Technology