VSKAP-IoD: A Verifiably Secure Key Agreement Protocol for Securing IoD Environment

The Internet of Drones (IoD) presents a crucial framework for managing drones in a decentralized manner, facilitating control, navigation, and access through the Internet. Given its importance in future generations, ensuring secure communication within this infrastructure is paramount. While existing authentication schemes have been proposed, they often suffer from design flaws or performance limitations, necessitating the development of more robust solutions. In response to these challenges, this article introduces a novel authentication scheme based on asymmetric cryptography tailored for the IoD environment. The scheme aims to address vulnerabilities in communication channels by providing strong authentication and cross-verification mechanisms. Formal scrutiny through GNY logic and ProVerif and informal validation through proposition demonstrate the security of the proposed scheme. Moreover, the scheme's performance is rigorously analyzed regarding computation, communication, and storage overheads. The comparative analysis highlights the scheme's ability to balance security and performance, positioning it as a viable solution for real-world implementation in IoD environments. Overall, this proposed authentication scheme represents a significant advancement in securing communication within the Internet of Drones, offering robust security and efficient performance for future applications.