Lightweight post-quantum authentication and key establishment protocol for satellite communication systems

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites have different security problems in addition to nice properties such as low latency and wide coverage. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) rely on these satellites for communication, which makes authentication with Network Control Centres (NCCs) critical. In this paper, a physically unclonable function (PUF)-based lightweight, post-quantum mutual authentication and key establishment protocol tailored for satellite-assisted UAV-NCC links is proposed to address these problems. The scheme uses the benefits of PUF and lightweight cryptographic operations to obtain an efficient scheme for resource-constrained environments while ensuring mutual authentication and quantum-resistant session key establishment.