Blockchain-based privacy-preserving authentication protocol for UAV cross-domain

As unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) become increasingly integral in domains such as agriculture, logistics, and military operations, secure cross-domain authentication mechanisms are essential. Existing centralized protocols are prone to single points of failure, privacy vulnerabilities, and physical capture risks. This paper presents a novel blockchain-based, privacy-preserving authentication protocol for UAVs operating across multiple domains. By combining zero-Knowledge succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge (zk-SNARKs) and physical unclonable functions (PUFs), the proposed protocol ensures secure identity verification without disclosing sensitive information. The blockchain platform offers a decentralized, tamper-resistant environment for UAV authentication, addressing the challenges of scalability, privacy, and security in cross-domain operations. We demonstrate the security and effectiveness of the protocol through formal and informal security proofs and performance evaluations. The results indicate that the proposed protocol outperforms traditional methods, achieving significant reductions in both computational and communication costs while maintaining high security standards.