A Lightweight and Trustworthy Authentication Protocol for UAV Networks Based on PUF

With the continuous development of drone remote sensing technology, drone networks have garnered widespread attention. The application of drones has expanded from military uses to industrial and civilian sectors, facilitating tasks such as automated combat, production, and rescue operations. However, since drones operate in public environments, their communications are vulnerable to physical attacks and tampering, which can lead to privacy leaks and pose security risks. Additionally, as resource-constrained devices, drones find it difficult to support complex encryption algorithms. To address this issue, this paper proposes a lightweight authentication protocol based on Physical Unclonable Functions (PUF). This protocol leverages PUF to prevent physical capture attacks and enhances system efficiency through hash and XOR operations. Furthermore, trust management technology is applied to further evaluate the network access behavior of drones, ensuring trustworthy access to the drone network. The security of this protocol is verified using the ROR model and AVISPA tool, and informal analysis demonstrates that it meets the security requirements of drone networks. Compared with existing protocols, this protocol shows significant advantages in terms of computational and communication overhead, achieving a good balance between security and efficiency.