BGAS: Blockchain and Group Decentralized Identifiers Assisted Authentication Scheme for UAV Networks

The applications of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms have effectively managed complex tasks, expanded operational areas, and executed missions either autonomously or in collaboration. Group authentication for UAV swarms is essential to ensure the authenticity, integrity, and confidentiality of sensitive data. However, the highly dynamic nature of UAV networks makes the group authentication process challenging. Traditional centralized group authentication methods are susceptible to a single point of failure. In distributed group authentication schemes, issues such as key-escrow attacks, inefficiencies in cross-domain authentication, and challenges in domain isolation within identity data management continue to persist. This paper explores a scalable and efficient authentication scheme assisted by blockchain and group decentralized identifiers (BGAS), which utilizes group decentralized identifiers (GDIDs) to extend decentralized identifiers (DIDs) for group authentication. Security and performance analyses demonstrate that our protocol offers robust security against various common types of attacks and is more efficient than current authentication protocols in terms of storage costs and group authentication time.