MixDrones: A Mix Zones-based Location Privacy Protection Mechanism for the Internet of Drones

Abstract

The Internet of Drones (IoD) is a novel network paradigm that presents a unique mobile network scenario with particular characteristics. Hence, privacy is a mandatory aspect to be assured, but there is a lack of studies regarding location privacy protection in IoD. Mix Zones is a location privacy protection mechanism well explored in terrestrial mobile networks, however, its investigation in IoD is still missing. In this work, we propose a novel Mix Zones-based approach, called MixDrones, that changes the airway of a drone besides its pseudonym. Hence, we advance the state of the art of location privacy protection mechanisms for IoD, in which MixDrones is the first approach proposed in this context. We carried out experiments through simulations comparing our approach with the traditional mechanism regarding anonymization coverage and resilience. We also evaluate the possibility of drone collision occurrence. The results pointed out that MixDrones provided a better location privacy protection than the traditional mechanism, anonymizing a large number of drones and being resilient through a trajectory-based de-anonymization attack, with less than 25% of trajectories being de-anonymized in all scenarios. Moreover, MixDrones mitigated the side effects of airway change, presenting low rates of airways change competition situations.