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Applied Sciences

A Lightweight Hybrid Post-Quantum Authentication Protocol for Resource-Constrained UAV–GCS Communications

Lin Lin, Jiaguo Tang, Jiahao Liao, Ruiqi Zhang, Haibin Wang

Published Oct 28, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Resource-constrained unmanned aerial vehicle–ground control station (UAV–GCS) communications face substantial post-quantum authentication costs, expensive cryptographic operations triggered by invalid requests, and key-state desynchronization during rekeying. To address these problems, this paper proposes QUAD, a lightweight hybrid post-quantum authentication and key agreement protocol. QUAD combines request pre-authentication, hybrid key establishment, and mutual key confirmation to reject invalid requests before costly cryptographic operations. It also allows a bounded transition period for receiving records under the old and new keys to mitigate key-state inconsistencies caused by link disruptions. Confidentiality and authentication are analyzed using ProVerif, while cryptographic and communication overhead, denial-of-service scenarios, and key-update behavior are evaluated on a Raspberry Pi platform. Under the specified security model, QUAD satisfies the tested authentication and confidentiality properties, reduces the computational burden of invalid requests, and improves bidirectional communication continuity under selected packet-loss conditions. These findings support its feasibility for post-quantum security in resource-constrained UAV–GCS links.

DOI
10.3390/app162110689

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Resource-constrained unmanned aerial vehicle–ground control station (UAV–GCS) communications face substantial post-quantum authentication costs, expensive cryptographic operations triggered by invalid requests, and key-state desynchronization during rekeying. To address these problems, this paper proposes QUAD, a lightweight hybrid post-quantum authentication and key agreement protocol. QUAD combines request pre-authentication, hybrid key establishment, and mutual key confirmation to reject invalid requests before costly cryptographic operations. It also allows a bounded transition period for receiving records under the old and new keys to mitigate key-state inconsistencies caused by link disruptions. Confidentiality and authentication are analyzed using ProVerif, while cryptographic and communication overhead, denial-of-service scenarios, and key-update behavior are evaluated on a Raspberry Pi platform. Under the specified security model, QUAD satisfies the tested authentication and confidentiality properties, reduces the computational burden of invalid requests, and improves bidirectional communication continuity under selected packet-loss conditions. These findings support its feasibility for post-quantum security in resource-constrained UAV–GCS links.
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 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) network serves as the core infrastructure of the future low-altitude intelligent network, providing flexible aerial smart services for various industries through inter-UAV collaboration and ground-air connectivity. With the advancement of quantum computing, quantum algorithms pose a serious threat to UAV communication networks. Traditional authentication protocols based on classical number-theoretic problems are no longer secure against quantum attacks. To address the challenges of quantum threats and the inherent characteristics of UAVs, such as high mobility and resource constraints, this paper proposes a quantum resistant authentication and key agreement protocol for UAV networks. The comprehensive informal security analysis demonstrates the robustness of the protocol against various attacks, particularly attacks based on quantum computing. Furthermore, the authentication component of the protocol adopts a lightweight design, reducing computational overhead by up to 53.57%, thereby balancing security and efficiency.
Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites have different security problems in addition to nice properties such as low latency and wide coverage. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) rely on these satellites for communication, which makes authentication with Network Control Centres (NCCs) critical. In this paper, a physically unclonable function (PUF)-based lightweight, post-quantum mutual authentication and key establishment protocol tailored for satellite-assisted UAV-NCC links is proposed to address these problems. The scheme uses the benefits of PUF and lightweight cryptographic operations to obtain an efficient scheme for resource-constrained environments while ensuring mutual authentication and quantum-resistant session key establishment.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) swarms require secure and efficient protocols for communication in dynamic and adversarial environments. This paper presents a post-quantum authenticated key exchange protocol for UAV communications, inspired by recent post-quantum extensions of EDHOC. The protocol is modeled in SAPIC+ and verified in the Tamarin Prover under a Dolev–Yao adversary, establishing executability, mutual authentication, key secrecy, and forward secrecy properties. Communication overhead and handshake latency are estimated using standardized parameter sizes and benchmark data for ARM Cortex-M4 and x86 platforms, showing how the choice of post-quantum primitives affects the feasibility of authenticated key exchange in constrained UAV deployments.
The integration of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) into vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) has emerged as a promising solution to overcome the limited coverage of conventional roadside unit (RSU)-based infrastructures. However, UAVs operate in open environments and cannot be fully trusted, while the rapid advancement of quantum computing threatens the long-term security of classical public-key cryptographic systems. As a result, many existing UAV-based VANET authentication schemes face fundamental limitations in future deployments. Most existing schemes either lack post-quantum security or incur excessive computational and communication overhead, making them unsuitable for real-time and high-mobility vehicular environments. In addition, the common assumptions of trusted UAVs do not align with realistic threat models. To address these issues, this paper proposes a lightweight post-quantum authentication and key exchange protocol based on the module learning with errors (MLWE) problem and physically unclonable functions (PUFs). The proposed scheme treats UAVs as untrusted relay nodes and excludes them from session key generation. Its security is evaluated using informal analysis, the real-or-random (RoR) model, BAN logic, and AVISPA, while performance evaluation indicates improved efficiency compared to existing schemes.
With the widespread deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in both military and civilian domains, the demand for secure and encrypted communications in UAV networks integrated with ground stations has become increasingly prominent. Authentication and key agreement protocols are widely regarded as essential technical mechanisms for ensuring the security of data transmission in wireless communication environments. However, the rapid advancement of quantum computing technologies poses potential security threats to conventional protocols based on elliptic curve cryptography. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a quantum-secure authentication and key agreement protocol tailored for UAV–ground station communication scenarios. By incorporating Crystal-Kyber, the proposed protocol ensures quantum resistance while striving to minimize system computational overhead. The results of the informal security analysis indicate that the proposed protocol can effectively withstand a variety of known attacks. In addition, comprehensive comparative evaluations with existing related protocols demonstrate that, while maintaining low computational overhead, the proposed scheme exhibits stronger robustness in terms of security and functional properties.