Securing UAV Communications: A Comparative Performance Analysis of Post-Quantum Cryptographic Techniques

The rapid advancement of quantum technology brings significant trouble to the public key encryption standards used presently. Traditional cryptographic algorithms rely on the complexity of a specific number of theoretical problems, but the computational capabilities of large-scale quantum computers would swiftly compromise these specific mathematics-based cryptographic algorithms. These quantum technology-based computers consist of millions of qubits which can enable them to damage nearly all modern public-key cryptographic systems. This security issue is particularly concerning Internet of Things (IoT) devices, which typically have limited resources and are thus more susceptible to emerging threats from quantum computing. To address this concern, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has started the process of standardizing Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC). In this paper, a detailed taxonomy of lightweight PQC algorithms are presented. The performance analysis of NIST Round 3 finalist (CRYSTALS-Kyber, SABER, NTRU and NTRU Encrypt) is done on a real Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) environment. The performance of these algorithms is analyzed with respect to the ten essential metrics such as throughput, latency, power consumption, energy consumption, memory usage, clock cycles, etc., for different payloads. The experimental results for each performance metrics is plotted individually for better analysis. The experimental result show that the SABER cipher outperforms other post-quantum ciphers.