Seamless Cross Domain Handover Authentication for Multi Operator UAV Networks Using Consortium Blockchain and PUFs

Large-scale Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) missions increasingly span the coverage areas of several independent operators, forcing a drone to re-authenticate every time it crosses an administrative boundary. Existing handover schemes either contact the home domain over a high-latency inter-operator backhaul, rely on cross-certified public-key infrastructures, or store long-term roaming credentials in flash memory that a captured drone readily surrenders. This paper proposes BCHA-UAV, a Blockchain-anchored Cross-domain Handover Authentication framework for multi-operator Flying Ad-Hoc Networks. During its initial attachment the home edge server issues the UAV a Lamport hash-chain seed and a domain-independent handover key, both sealed on the drone with a Physical Unclonable Function (PUF). The chain head and per-domain ECIES-wrapped handover keys are anchored on a consortium blockchain shared by all operators under PBFT consensus. A foreign edge server can then admit a roaming UAV with a single two-message exchange, verifying a one-time hash-chain token against its local ledger replica—without contacting the home domain, verifying a signature, or holding any prior relationship with the drone. Tokens are consumed on-chain, giving every operator an immutable, ordered handover audit trail and instant network-wide revocation. The protocol is proven secure in the Real-Or-Random model, verified with BAN logic, and modelled in HLPSL for AVISPA. Using an analytical cost model calibrated with micro-benchmarks on a low-power ARM platform, a handover costs the UAV only 0.324 ms of computation (one PUF evaluation, two scalar multiplications, and six hashes) and 202 bytes over the air in two rounds, achieves perfect forward secrecy, and reduces handover latency by up to 83% against schemes that must traverse the inter-operator backhaul