An Improved Aggregation-Based Signcryption for Secure Drone to Ground Station Communication System

Secure and efficient communication in drone-assisted networks is critical for maintaining the integrity of cyber-physical systems. This paper presents a rigorous cryptographic analysis of an existing aggregation-based signcryption scheme, revealing key vulnerabilities, including susceptibility to forgery, impersonation attacks, and inconsistencies in key generation and verification processes. To overcome these limitations, we propose a novel aggregation-based signcryption framework built upon hyperelliptic curve cryptography (HECC), offering enhanced security and lightweight computation. The proposed scheme is formally proven to satisfy fundamental cryptographic properties, including confidentiality, authentication, integrity, unforgeability, and impersonation resistance under the hardness assumption of the hyperelliptic curve discrete logarithm problem (HECDLP). Performance evaluation demonstrates that our approach achieves up to 36% reduction in computational cost and 12% lower communication overhead compared to the schemes of Verma et al. [1], Aithekar et al. [2], and Ali et al. [3]. These results confirm the practical applicability of our design for secure and efficient drone-to-ground station communication in resource-constrained environments.