SACRED EYE: Secure Communication and Decentralized Monitoring for Swarm UAV Mission Completion

The flexibility, scalability, and robustness of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) swarms make them highly adaptable to dynamic environments. However, these advantages also introduce a range of optimization challenges, including constraints on size, weight, and energy consumption, as well as less explored topics such as lightweight, secure communication and reliable mission completion. Inspired by the ant identification methods, we propose a decentralized solution to enhance communication security and ensure mission completion within UAV swarms. Unlike existing methods that rely on Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs), our solution introduces a PUF-less framework. Specifically, we define private IDs and group keys for individual UAVs, enabling secure communication while minimizing the risk of intrusion. The effectiveness of our method is validated through simulations, which highlight the importance of periodically updating the group key. Additionally, we address targeted attacks on private IDs by incorporating behavioral analysis and shared monitoring among swarm members. Our proposed approach paves the way for realizing the full potential of UAV swarms.