μTesla-Based Authentication for Reliable and Secure Broadcast Communications in IoD Using Blockchain

Abstract

The Internet of Drones (IoD) manages and coordinates communications between drones in Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Ensuring security and privacy in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) networks, i.e. drones, is essential to protect data from cyber attacks. In this context, providing authentication is a major challenge due to the fact that drones are devices limited in power capabilities. The problem is aggravated by the dynamism of IoD networks due to the high mobility of drones, being sensitive to packet loss and handovers. Blockchain technology is attractive to address the problem of centralization of existing authentication protocols. In this paper, we provide a decentralized, secure, and efficient authentication protocol, based on μTesla, that relies on Blockchain to manage drone authentication. We analyze the security and performance of the proposed solution. Simulation results show that the proposed solution outperforms several approaches in the literature, achieving an authentication delay of less than 250 ms with a low information exchange of 1024 bits for 128-bit security level while maintaining low computational requirements.