<i>SECURE</i>: Secure and Efficient Protocol Using Randomness and Edge-Computing for Drone-Assisted Internet of Vehicles

The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) faces significant challenges related to secure authentication, efficient communication, and privacy preservation due to the high mobility of vehicles, the need for real-time data processing, varying quality of communication links, and the diverse range of devices and protocols requiring interoperability. These challenges are further complicated by the large-scale, dynamic, and heterogeneous nature of IoV systems. Traditional approaches using Road Side Connecting Nodes (RSCNs) face challenges like limited range, high costs, and single points of failure. Drone-assisted IoV (DIoV) networks address these issues by using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as mobile edge nodes, enhancing connectivity, extending coverage, and improving adaptability and resilience. To address these challenges, we propose SECURE, a drone-assisted, Physically Unclonable Function (PUF)-based authentication and privacy-preserving protocol integrated with edge computing. This architecture replaces RSCNs with edge nodes and incorporates UAVs as mobile edge nodes, providing extended coverage, reduced latency, and enhanced adaptability. The PUFs in SECURE generate unique hardware-based cryptographic keys, adding an additional layer of security, while edge computing offloads computational tasks, improves network efficiency, and further reduces latency. The formal security analysis, conducted using the Random Oracle Model (ROM), proves the robustness of the session key against active and passive adversaries. Furthermore, informal security analysis demonstrates that SECURE effectively resists various security attacks, while achieving confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity in DIoV. In SECURE, we have considered two types of devices for experiments: NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX and Raspberry Pi 4. The performance analysis, considering the results from Jetson Xavier NX, demonstrates that SECURE achieves maximum upto approximately 82.1% less communication cost and 78% faster computation time compared to the state-of-the-art schemes.