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International Conference on Communications (COMM)

Post-Quantum Secure Communication on Resource-Constrained UAVs for Mission-Critical Infrastructure Protection

Andrei Istrate, Cosmin Rusea, Florin Răstoceanu, Madalin-George Boboc, Cosmin Gruescu, Constantin Grozea, Bogdan Ilie

Published May 28, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher
DOI
10.1109/comm70054.2026.11591270

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Secure communication in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) networks is critical for a wide range of civil and military applications, from precision agriculture and disaster response to critical infrastructure monitoring. These missions require lightweight, tamper-resistant, and quantum-secure authentication mechanisms. We examine the recently proposed Quantum-Resistant Identity Authentication and Key Agreement Scheme for UAV Networks Based on the Kyber Algorithm (LIGKYX) and demonstrate its critical weaknesses, including a lack of Perfect Forward/Backward Secrecy (PFS/PBS), and desynchronization vulnerabilities. To address these limitations, we propose a novel authentication and key agreement protocol that integrates SRAM-based Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) with the Kyber post-quantum key encapsulation mechanism, eliminating the reliance on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and stateful counters used in LIGKYX. The security of the proposed protocol is validated through both formal and informal analyses, demonstrating strong resistance to replay, impersonation, man-in-the-middle, desynchronization, and UAV capture attacks. Performance evaluation confirms its efficiency: the total communication overhead is reduced by 7.1% (from 1836 bytes in LIGKYX to 1705 bytes in the proposed scheme), and the total authentication time is reduced by more than 54%, from 87.84 ms in LIGKYX to 40.23 ms in the proposed scheme. These improvements demonstrate that the protocol not only strengthens security but also significantly reduces computation and communication costs. Overall, the proposed solution offers a lightweight, scalable, and quantum-resistant authentication framework tailored for resource-constrained UAV environments, representing a substantial advancement over existing schemes such as LIGKYX.
The first comprehensive framework for deploying NIST-standardized post-quantum cryptography in military UAV systems, bridging the critical gap between theoretical PQC algorithms and practical implementation on resource-constrained drone platforms. We provide rigorous mathematical security proofs for lattice-based schemes (Kyber, Dilithium, Falcon, SPHINCS+) tailored to MAVLink protocol requirements, extensive performance benchmarking demonstrating <1% operational overhead on embedded military hardware, and four complete implementation architectures with working code. Our NATO-compliant security frameworks integrate STANAG requirements with PQC mandates—addressing a gap in existing civilian-focused literature. We validate our approach through an MQ-9 Reaper retrofit case study achieving zero mission degradation, providing the defense community with an actionable roadmap for transitioning military UAV fleets to quantum resistance before cryptographically-relevant quantum computers emerge (projected 2028-2033).