Minimizing Area Footprint of UAV Communication Security Using FPGAs

Nowadays, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are used in numerous applications, facilitating human activities. However, UAVs are vulnerable to cyberattacks, particularly concerning communication. To protect UAV communication, lightweight cryptographic algorithms have been enrolled, ensuring security in such resource-constrained environments. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) promoted sponge constructions and nonlinear feedback shift registers (NFSR) as the bases for lightweight cryptography. As hardware offers significant advantages regarding performance and area-footprint over software, research moved on employing reconfigurable computing like Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) in this field. This paper proposes a novel security realization in UAVs based on hardware implementation of lightweight NFSR-based authenticated encryption, targeting reduced-area and uncompromised security. Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA is considered and NIST lightweight finalist TinyJAMBU mechanism is employed. The area consumption of the proposed solution is minimal, compared to existing solutions in the literature, making it ideal for UAV devices with limited bandwidth and computational resources.