Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly integrated into Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems for applications such as surveillance, disaster response, environmental monitoring, and logistics. These missions demand reliable and secure communication between UAVs and cloud platforms for command, control, and data storage. However, UAV communication channels are highly vulnerable to eavesdropping, spoofing, and man-in-the-middle attacks due to their wireless and often long-range nature. Traditional cryptographic schemes either impose excessive computational overhead on resource-constrained UAVs or lack sufficient robustness for cloud-level security. To address this challenge, we propose a dual-layer encryption architecture that balances lightweight efficiency with strong cryptographic guarantees. Unlike prior dual-layer approaches, the proposed framework introduces a context-aware adaptive lightweight layer for UAV-to-gateway communication and a hybrid post-quantum layer for gateway-to-cloud security, enabling dynamic cipher selection, energy-aware key scheduling, and quantum-resilient key establishment. In the first layer, UAV-to-gateway communication employs a lightweight symmetric encryption scheme optimized for low latency and minimal energy consumption. In the second layer, gateway-to-cloud communication uses post-quantum asymmetric encryption to ensure resilience against emerging quantum threats. The architecture is further reinforced with optional multi-path hardening and blockchain-assisted key lifecycle management to enhance scalability and tamper-proof auditability. Experimental evaluation using a UAV testbed and cloud integration shows that the proposed framework achieves 99.85% confidentiality preservation, reduces computational overhead on UAVs by 42%, and improves end-to-end latency by 35% compared to conventional single-layer encryption schemes. These results confirm that the proposed adaptive and hybridized dual-layer design provides a scalable, secure, and resource-aware solution for UAV-to-cloud communication, offering both present-day practicality and future-proof cryptographic resilience.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly integrated into Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems for applications such as surveillance, disaster response, environmental monitoring, and logistics. These missions demand reliable and secure communication between UAVs and cloud platforms for command, control, and data storage. However, UAV communication channels are highly vulnerable to eavesdropping, spoofing, and man-in-the-middle attacks due to their wireless and often long-range nature. Traditional cryptographic schemes either impose excessive computational overhead on resource-constrained UAVs or lack sufficient robustness for cloud-level security. To address this challenge, we propose a dual-layer encryption architecture that balances lightweight efficiency with strong cryptographic guarantees. Unlike prior dual-layer approaches, the proposed framework introduces a context-aware adaptive lightweight layer for UAV-to-gateway communication and a hybrid post-quantum layer for gateway-to-cloud security, enabling dynamic cipher selection, energy-aware key scheduling, and quantum-resilient key establishment. In the first layer, UAV-to-gateway communication employs a lightweight symmetric encryption scheme optimized for low latency and minimal energy consumption. In the second layer, gateway-to-cloud communication uses post-quantum asymmetric encryption to ensure resilience against emerging quantum threats. The architecture is further reinforced with optional multi-path hardening and blockchain-assisted key lifecycle management to enhance scalability and tamper-proof auditability. Experimental evaluation using a UAV testbed and cloud integration shows that the proposed framework achieves 99.85% confidentiality preservation, reduces computational overhead on UAVs by 42%, and improves end-to-end latency by 35% compared to conventional single-layer encryption schemes. These results confirm that the proposed adaptive and hybridized dual-layer design provides a scalable, secure, and resource-aware solution for UAV-to-cloud communication, offering both present-day practicality and future-proof cryptographic resilience.
UAVs are increasingly deployed in mission-critical IoT applications (e.g., surveillance, disaster response, environ-mental monitoring) to securely relay sensitive data to cloud infrastructures for storage and analysis, but conventional end-to-end encryption is often too costly for resource-constrained UAVs and may not withstand emerging quantum-capable threats. We propose a quantum-resistant proxy re-encryption (QR-PRE) scheme for UAV-to-cloud communication, where mission data are encrypted with a lightweight symmetric key and then safely re-encrypted by intermediate gateways via proxy cryptography without exposing plaintext. For long-term confidentiality, the framework uses lattice-based post-quantum primitives (Ky-ber512/768) to generate proxy keys and perform re-encryption, providing strong protection against quantum attacks, alongside energy-aware gateway scheduling to reduce swarm overhead while supporting forward secrecy and scalability. Tests on a heterogeneous UAV–gateway–cloud setup show 99.87
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, are increasingly being employed across a broad spectrum of applications, ranging from military operations to commercial purposes. However, as UAVs become more integrated into everyday life, security and privacy concerns are similarly escalating due to vulnerabilities arising from operating on open wireless channels and having limited onboard computational resources. Moreover, with the emergence of quantum computers, conventional cryptographic methods that ensure the security and privacy of UAV communications are at severe risk. These risks encompass the possibility of unauthorized access, breaches of data, and cyber-physical attacks that jeopardize the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of UAV operations. Quantum computers are expected to break the conventional cryptography methods, such as symmetric and asymmetric schemes, with the support of Grover’s and Shor’s algorithms, respectively. Consequently, traditional cryptographic algorithms must give way to quantum-resistant algorithms, referred to as Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) algorithms. Although researchers actively develop, test, and standardize new PQC algorithms, the threat persists despite the progress made through these consistent efforts. This review article first examines the security and privacy landscape, including threats and requirements of UAVs. This article also discusses PQC and various PQC families and the status of the NIST’s implementation and standardization process. Lastly, we explore challenges and future directions in implementing PQC for UAVs.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have gone from single platforms that were remotely piloted to fully networked, autonomous cyber-physical systems that operate in the civilian, industrial and defense arenas. Their increasing reliance on wireless communication for command and control, cooperative sensing, distributed decision-making and swarm coordination has raised the level of communication security to the point where it has become a mission-critical requirement. Contemporary UAV security architectures are much based on classical public-key–based cryptography (RSA and elliptic are the most well-known) whose security assumptions become fundamentally vulnerable against the presence of large-scale quantum computing. This chapter gives a comprehensive and future-oriented discussion about post-quantum cryptography (PQC)-based security models for UAVs communication and information exchange networks. Quantum resistance should be applied not only at the algorithmic level but across the whole UAV communications trust stack, which is the main argument. Part I set the conceptual and technical ground by affecting a short range of the improvement of UAV communication systems, in articulating a system quantum-era threat model and giving a motivation for mission-adaptive, cross-layer security architectures. The discussion makes the long-term confidentiality, survivability of the system and continuing operation more robust, and the security of UAV with PQC enabled is no longer speculative, but is considered a strategic requirement.
With the rapid development of integrated vehicle-road-cloud systems, RoadSide Units (RSUs) have become crucial for communication in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs). However, RSU failures disrupt real-time vehicle-to-cloud connectivity, exacerbating traffic congestion and safety risks. Recently, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have emerged as a promising solution for temporary mobile base stations due to their rapid deployment and flexibility. Nevertheless, the open and dynamic nature of UAV-vehicle communication networks presents critical challenges in achieving both secure communication and lightweight authentication. Furthermore, the unsupervised deployment environment of UAVs makes them particularly vulnerable to physical attacks. To address these challenges, in this paper, we propose a secure and lightweight UAV-assisted vehicle authentication scheme based on quantum key. The scheme leverages quantum keys, hash functions and XOR to ensure secrecy and traceability of malicious entities. Utilising the Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) and fuzzy extractor to resist physical attacks. A private blockchain architecture is implemented for secure data storage and management. We verify the scheme’s security using the real-or-random (ROR) oracle model and the Scyther tool. The experimental results show that, compared to other schemes, our scheme has a lower overhead, with an average packet loss rate reduction of 11.42% – 28.8% and an average communication delay reduction of 14.41%–63%.
ABSTRACT This paper presents a simulation- and model-based study — all results are derived from validated simulation frameworks rather than physical hardware measurements — of the post-quantum migration of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) command-and-control links. The advent of cryptographically relevant quantum computers (CRQCs) fundamentally threatens the security of unmanned aerial systems (UAS), particularly command and control links that rely on classical public-key cryptography. Compounded by "harvest now, decrypt later” strategies, this necessitates a proactive transition to post-quantum cryptography (PQC). We develop a quantum threat model for UAV communications and evaluates a migration pathway anchored by the NIST-standardized ML-KEM (Kyber) algorithm. We model and benchmark ML-KEM on a simulated ARM Cortex-M4-class flight controller plat-form, analysing computational performance, memory footprint, energy consumption, and real-time scheduling behaviour. Results demonstrate that ML-KEM-768 encapsulation reduces latency by approximately 39% compared to elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman, while a hybrid ECDH+ML-KEM-768 configuration introduces moderate computational and memory overhead. However, the substantial increase in ciphertext size creates critical fragmentation bottlenecks on low-bandwidth telemetry links such as LoRa, motivating a proposed symmetric key derivation architecture for bandwidth-efficient rekeying. Side-channel analysis under an idealised leakage model confirms susceptibility to correlation power analysis, highlighting the necessity for hardened implementations. Furthermore, real-time operating system scheduling simulations under a two-task discrete-event model reveal that naive task co-scheduling induces significant jitter, necessitating strict priority isolation to maintain flight controller determinism. These findings establish simulation-grounded guidance for integrating PQC into resource-constrained UAV platforms without compromising real-time performance or communication reliability.
The emergence of sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks introduces unprecedented requirements for ultra-secure, low-latency communication across heterogeneous space–air–ground integrated network (SAGIN). Existing drone communication frameworks including LoRaWAN, Long Term Evolution, and Ad Hoc mesh architectures exhibit critical vulnerabilities to eavesdropping, jamming, and quantum-computational attacks due to their reliance on classical cryptographic primitives. To address these challenges, this work presents the Quantum-Secured Adaptive Routing Algorithm (QSARA), a novel framework designed for 6G-enabled unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) networks that integrates Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS), and Joint Communication and Sensing (JCAS) to enhance information-theoretic security and real-time performance. The proposed framework employs a quantum-augmented dynamic graph model to represent UAV swarm networking and uses Proximal Policy Optimisation (PPO)-based deep reinforcement learning to optimise routing under adversarial and uncertain conditions. A multi-objective cost function jointly captures classical quality of service metrics, such as latency, bandwidth, and energy consumption alongside with quantum-layer security indicators, including quantum bit error rate, key pool entropy, and key availability. High-fidelity simulations with 500 mobile drones under diverse adversarial threats demonstrate that the proposed framework achieves a key establishment success rate of 96.2%, end-to-end latency of 23.7 milliseconds, energy consumption of 7.8 watt-hours, and a packet delivery ratio of 94.1%, outperforming state-of-the-art classical and quantum-aware baselines. These results position the QSARA as a scalable and quantum-resilient routing solution for mission-critical UAV networking in next-generation 6G smart mobility ecosystems.