A Location Privacy Preservation Scheme for the Internet of Drones

The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or drones, has become increasingly widespread across a variety of applications, ranging from filmmaking and surveillance to rescue operations, espionage, and military missions. This proliferation has given rise to drone networks, swarms, fleets, and the Internet of Drones (IoD). As these drones are used to carry confidential and sensitive missions, location privacy and security are of essential importance to ensure. Drones are required to broadcast location data and identifiers for navigation and safety, yet they inherit the resource constraints of the Internet of Things (IoT), such as limited battery life and computational capacity, which necessitate lightweight and efficient security solutions. To address these challenges, we propose an identifier-changing scheme designed to prevent tracking and safeguard both identity and location privacy. Our approach relies on inter-drone cooperation, coordinated silence periods, and location obfuscation to achieve unlinkability and anonymity. Techniques inspired by vehicular networks, when adapted to the energy limitations of drones, show strong potential in enhancing privacy within the IoD.