Reducing In-swarm Verification Cost: A Dynamic Mutual Authentication Scheme for UAV Swarms

• Lei Meng,
• Naifu Deng,
• Yueqiang Xu,
• Fuhong Lin,

Vol. 19, No. 5, May 31, 2025
10.3837/tiis.2025.05.016, Download Paper (Free):

• Aggregate signature
• Continuous Authentication
• Mutual Authentication
• UAV swarms authentication
• Verification cost

Abstract

The aggregate signature protocol is an effective mechanism to ensure the authenticity of identities and messages in UAV swarms. However, existing schemes lack mutual authentication between the aggregator and the signer, and the verification cost for in-swarm authentication is still relatively high. To address these issues, we propose a dynamic and efficient aggregate signature scheme based on continuous authentication. It allows the initial authentication and concomitant authentication to perform asynchronously in in-swarm authentication. Mutual authentication and the lightweight operations in concomitant authentication enable efficient mutual verification between the master UAV and individual UAVs, and reduce the in-swarm verification at the same time. Additionally, adjusting the frequency of initial authentication supports dynamic adaptation. We prove the security of our scheme and provide an analysis, comparing its features and costs with those of similar schemes. The simulations show that the verification cost for in-swarm authentication is reduced by nearly 50% compared to current similar schemes, and the computation latency is reduced by approximately 25 %, albeit with a moderate increase in communication costs. The overall endurance of the UAV swarm increased, making our scheme particularly suitable for large-scale UAV swarm applications.

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