Lightweight authentication for drone service collaboration using blockchain-based decentralized identity and physically unclonable functions
Author Identifier (ORCID)
Abstract
In an open and complex environment of drone service collaboration scenarios, efficient identity authentication is essential for secure service interactions. Traditional schemes suffer from high computational costs, low communication efficiency, and vulnerability to single-point failures. This paper presents a new lightweight authentication scheme (BDP-Auth) based on blockchain decentralized identity (DID) and physically unclonable functions (PUFs). PUF enables low-power, low-cost identity key generation without relying on complex computation or large storage, ensuring tamper-proof identifiers while reducing hardware and energy overhead. Using blockchain decentralization, the DID mechanism securely registers and stores drone identities, offering transparency and integrity. Security analysis shows that BDP-Auth achieves forward and backward security, meaning that the compromise of the current session key does not reveal past or subsequent session communications, and also resists physical capture and impersonation attacks. Experiments demonstrate that, compared to PRLAP-IoD, BDP-Auth reduces the computation overhead by 38.3% and 45.0% on the STM32F4 and NodeMCU platforms, respectively, decreases communication overhead by 36.9%, and reduces storage overhead by 27.5%, significantly improving overall efficiency.
Keywords
blockchain, decentralized identity (DID), physically unclonable function (PUF), Service collaboration
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of Publication
1-1-2026
ISSN
15566013
Volume
21
Publication Title
IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security
Publisher
IEEE
School
School of Engineering
Funding Information
National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number: 62272031) / Beijing Nova Program (Grant Number: 20230484257) / Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant Number: 2025JBMC044)
Copyright
subscription content
Content Type
Metadata only
First Page
5597
Last Page
5611
Recommended Citation
Duan, L., Chen, P., Zhang, W., Liu, J., Du, Y., Ruan, N., Li, C., Wang, W., & Ni, W. (2026). Lightweight authentication for drone service collaboration using blockchain-based decentralized identity and physically unclonable functions. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 21, 5597–5611. https://doi.org/10.1109/TIFS.2026.3698606