D2D-MAP: A Drone to Drone Authentication Protocol Using Physical Unclonable Functions

With the continuous miniaturization of electronic devices and the recent advancements in wireless communication technologies, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), in general, and Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (SUAVs, a.k.a., drones), in particular, are becoming progressively used by the civilian sector within the context of a variety of applications, bringing great convenience to the public. However, due to their resource-constrained nature, risky environmental application, and wireless way of communication, drones are not immune from cyberthreats. As a consequence, the security of drones (SUAVs) has recently gained significant attention by the research community. In particular, when it comes to inter-drone communication. Although traditional cryptographic techniques may provide a certain level of security, they actually constitute a heavy burden on SUAVs due to their resource-constrained nature. In the light of enforcing the security of inter-drone communications, this paper proposes a lightweight drone-to-drone authentication protocol, called D2D-MAP, that uses PUF (Physical Unclonable Function) technology. We design the protocol and evaluate its resilience against various attacks. We use resource-constrained hardware to implement the authentication protocol and perform an evaluation of its performance. We show that the protocol's security and the obtained performance are prominent compared to state-of-the-art authentication protocols, and that they conform to SUAVs security and performance requirements.