Lightweight Group Handover for Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)

Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, are widely deployed and often transmit sensitive data via cellular networks, Wi-Fi, or device-to-device (D2D) communication frameworks. Due to their aerial mobility, UAVs are well-suited for a wide range of applications such as military missions, cargo transport, mapping, and agricultural monitoring. However, securing their communications remains a significant challenge. Their continuous movement and frequent data transmissions make secure authentication difficult to maintain, especially as UAVs often need to switch between different network cells during flight. For example, a drone initially connected to cell A may need to handover to cell B as it progresses along its route. This study is designed to present new authentication and handover processes for multiple nodes within a predefined group. The proposed method makes the group handover process simple and low-cost, while also being resistant to various security threats. Compared to a previous handover scheme based on elliptic curves and Lagrange interpolation, the proposed method, leveraging inner product space, demonstrates significantly improved performance. The corresponding test results are also presented.