A Random Label and Lightweight Hash‐Based Security Authentication Mechanism for a UAV Swarm

Abstract

Nowadays, the application of a UAV swarm is becoming more and more widespread in the military field, and more and more attention is paid to the security of mission resource allocation. However, the relay node forwarding in the wireless transmission process brings greater risks to data leakage, and the computing power and energy of the UAV consumption is limited, so a lighter solution is required. This paper proposes a mechanism for the safe allocation of UAV swarm mission resources based on random labels. Each task has a random label to solve the problem of database security and wireless transmission security in the process of UAV task assignment. Furthermore, a lightweight stream cipher encryption scheme is illustrated to ensure the security of the UAV database. The irreversible hash function SHA‐256 and the lightweight foam structure hash function SPONGENT‐128 are used to generate random labels and then allocate task resources. In the case of energy consumption, it reduces the possibility of the enemy successfully obtaining private data. The simulation results show that the scheme has good performance in terms of security and has better performance than existing methods in terms of throughput and delay, without increasing too much energy consumption.