Blockchain-Based Identity Authentication Oriented to Multi-Cluster UAV Networking

Abstract: Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) networking is increasingly used in field environments such as power inspection, agricultural plant protection, and emergency rescue. To guarantee UAV networking security, UAV identity authentication attracts wide attention, especially in the field environment without perfect infrastructure. Some blockchain-based UAV identity authentication solutions are proposed to establish decentralized and trusted authentication systems without relying on infrastructure. However, these solutions do not support disconnected UAV reconnection or even disband a cluster directly after its head UAV disconnection, which compromises cluster robustness and task result integrity. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based identity authentication solution oriented to multi-cluster UAV networking with a UAV disconnection mechanism and a task result backup mechanism. Specifically, we build a blockchain maintained by head UAVs of all clusters, managing identity information to guarantee the security of decentralized identity management. The UAV disconnection mechanism permits a verified distributed UAV reconnection to ensure the robustness of the UAV cluster, and on this basis, the task result backup mechanism ensures the integrity of the task results stored in a cluster even any UAV disconnection. Finally, extensive experimental results prove the superiority of our solutions in terms of robustness, integrity, delay, and energy consumption.