Blockchain-Based Trust and Authentication Model for Detecting and Isolating Malicious Nodes in Flying Ad Hoc Networks

Flying Ad Hoc Networks (FANET) is an emerging area of research due to its low cost, high coverage and fast transmission features. In these networks, the flying nodes are connected with ground stations and communicate wirelessly, especially when the networks are congested and complex. Due to mobility, and lack of predefined infrastructure, these networks have suffered from various security and trust issues. The traditional trust and security solutions are designed for ground networks and are not feasible for these networks. This paper proposes a trust and authentication model including Trust Establishment Mechanism for FANET (TEM-FANET) and authentication system by using Block-chain method. The trust is calculated to evaluate the node’s trust status and ensure the existence of the trustworthy nodes by using direct, indirect, and cumulative trust values. Whereas the authentication system is utilizing blockchain technology for nodes authentication and evaluate its feasibility. The proposed model is lightweight and able to monitor the node’s behavior and compute the trusted quality and broadcast the node status with neighbor nodes. The proposed model is also integrated with ground stations for record keeping and decision-making processes. The proposed model is evaluated in simulation with state-of-the-art trust solutions where the results show the better performance in terms of overhead, data delivery, node detection rate, and computational time.