Post-Quantum Safe Isogeny-Based Authenticated Key Establishment Protocol for Drones-Assisted 5G-Enabled Smart City Environments

Abstract

Internet of Drones (IoD) is increasingly used in smart cities for surveillance, traffic monitoring, and emergency response. However, the open wireless environment and the rise of quantum computing pose serious threats to existing drone authentication schemes. This work introduces a lightweight Commutative Supersingular Isogeny Diffie-Hellman (CSIDH)-based authentication and key agreement scheme for secure drone-assisted smart-city communication. The designed scheme guarantees mutual authentication, user anonymity, and forward secrecy, while resisting replay, impersonation, drone capture, and quantum attacks. Security assessment and performance analysis verify that the scheme offers strong post-quantum security with low communication and storage overhead, making it an efficient choice for lightweight IoD environments.