A novel block cipher design paradigm for secured communication

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are commonly used to conduct tasks (e.g. monitor and surveillance) in various civilian applications from a remote location. Wireless communications (i.e. radio frequency) are often used to remotely pilot the UAV and stream data back to the operator. The characteristics of the wireless communication channel allows attackers to monitor and manipulate the operation of the UAV through passive and active attacks. Cryptography is selected as a countermeasure to mitigate these threats; however, a drawback of using cryptography is the impact on the real-time operation and performance of the UAV. This paper proposes the Permutation Substitution Network (PSN) design paradigm with an instance presented which is the Alternative Advanced Encryption Standard (AAES) and analysis of its performance against the standardised Substitution Permutation Network (SPN) design paradigm the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Results indicate that using the PSN paradigm is a feasible approach in comparison to the SPN design paradigm.