Lightweight authentication approach for unmanned aerial vehicles based on reinforcement learning
Online published: 2026-01-04
Supported by
Jiangsu Provincial Key Research and Development Program under Grant BE2022068 and Grant BE2022068-1; National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 62202222; National Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province under Grant BK20220880
Copyright
Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) networks with such characteristics as high dynamics and open airspace communication environment are highly vulnerable to replay attacks, resulting in serious consequences such as illegal access and even privacy leakage. The traditional authentication mechanisms rely on fixed identity identifiers and have a large overhead, which is difficult to adapt to the resource-constrained and highly dynamic UAV network environment, and to satisfy the dual requirements of low overhead and high security authentication. To this end, a lightweight authentication approach for UAVs based on reinforcement learning was proposed, which could efficiently defend against the replay attacks and reduce the overhead of authentication. Firstly, the constructed constructs the Remote ID as the identity identifier based on the real-time location information of UAVs, and used the elliptic curve encryption technology to achieve identity authentication for unknown UAVs. Secondly, a risk-aware RL algorithm was designed to achieve adaptive optimization of the authentication policy, including the encryption strategy of the authentication message and the session duration, and to achieve the low-overhead and high-security authentication. Comprehensively considering resource limitations and tasks requirements, the algorithm constructed a punishment function to evaluate the short-term risks of the selected authentication policy, further guiding the selection of algorithm policies and avoiding exploring policies that could cause authentication failure. On this basis, the algorithm designed a hierarchical architecture to compress the policy dimension, thereby improving the optimization efficiency of the authentication policy and adapting to the high dynamic characteristics of UAVs. Experimental results showed that the proposed approach effectively reduced the authentication latency, the energy consumption the and attack success rate compared with the traditional methods.
LIU Zihan , JIA Lingru , LU Xiaozhen , WU Qihui . Lightweight authentication approach for unmanned aerial vehicles based on reinforcement learning[J]. Journal of Cybersecurity, 2025 , 3(4) : 16 -28 . DOI: 10.20172/j.issn.2097-3136.250402
表 1 基于强化学习的无人机轻量化身份认证方法的伪代码Table 1 Pseudo-code of lightweight authentication method for UAVs based on RL |
| 算法1 基于强化学习的无人机轻量化身份认证方法 |
| 初始化:N, M, K, |
| 1)For |
| 2) For |
| 3) For |
| 4) 获得无人机i的身份认证请求以及Remote ID |
| 5) 通过式(9)构建状态 |
| 6) 通过式(12)选择无人机身份认证策略 |
| 7) 地面基站m与无人机i进行身份认证 |
| 8) 通过式(5)计算消息保护等级 |
| 9) 通过式(7)计算攻击成功率 |
| 10) 通过式(10)计算短期风险 |
| 11) 通过式(11)计算奖励 |
| 12) |
| 13) 估计状态值 |
| 14) 通过式(13)计算优势函数 |
| 15) 通过式(14)和式(15)更新网络权重参数 |
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