Block chain-based access control protocol in Internet of Drones

The Internet of Drones (IoD) is an emerging domain due to its capability of being deployed in several domains. The drones in IoD are capable of exploring the platform and transfer commodities with embedded sensors. However, the data accumulated by drone sensors face privacy and security issues due to advanced technologies. This paper devises a blockchain-based access control scheme for initiating secure communication among the drones in IoD. The system has four different entities that involve the Drone, server, user, and control room. The proposed Blockchain-based access control scheme involves two phases: the authentication and access control phases. The authentication phase is performed considering sender drone credentials, and the access control phase is done using four methods. In the access control phase, four kinds of access control mechanisms are considered: Drone to drone access control, Drone to server access control, Emergency access control if drone failure and Control set up with blockchain technology. Both the communicating entities can establish the secret key for secure communication at the end of access control. The proposed Blockchain-based access control scheme provided superior performance concerning classical methods with a minimal end-to-end delay of 0.870sec, a minimal packet loss rate of 2%, and maximal throughput of 70.493bps. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.