Research Article

Enabling Space-Air integration: A Satellite-UAV networking authentication scheme

The State Key Laboratory of Integrated Services Networks, School of Cyber Engineering, Xidian University, Xi’an, 710126, China

^* Corresponding author (e-mail: sli_01@stu.xidian.edu.cn (Sheng Li); caoj897@gmail.com (Jin Cao))

Received: 30 June 2023
Revised: 17 August 2023
Accepted: 22 September 2023

Abstract

One of the goals of sixth-generation mobile networks (6G) is to achieve a larger network coverage area. Satellite networks enable global coverage and aerial nodes such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) can serve as a supplement to ground networks in remote environments. Therefore, 6G networks are gradually evolving towards Space-Air-Ground integrated networks. The combination of UAV networks and satellite networks is a research hotspot in the field of Space-Air integrated networks. However, the combination of UAV networks and satellite networks currently faces many challenges in terms of security. The characteristics of large propagation delay and unstable communication links in satellite networks make them vulnerable to various attacks, including eavesdropping, tampering, and impersonation. Meanwhile, existing research on UAV networks mainly focuses on UAV-Ground networking authentication mechanisms, which are not suitable for resource-constrained nodes in the Space-Air integration scenario. Therefore, based on elliptic curve public key cryptography and Chebyshev polynomial, we propose a secure networking authentication scheme for satellite nodes and UAV nodes in the Space-Air integration scenario. The security analysis indicates that our scheme possesses security attributes such as mutual authentication, key agreement, identity anonymity, unlinkability, perfect forward-backward security, and resistance against various protocol attacks, among other security properties. Performance analysis also indicates certain advantages of our scheme over existing schemes in terms of signaling, bandwidth, and computational overhead.