Aircraft-Ground Secure Communication with Reduced RF Handshakes
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Solution Overview
Problem
Aircraft face challenges in establishing secure communications with ground entities due to limited radiofrequency bandwidth, where existing handshake protocols consume significant RF resources and often fail due to time-out constraints, necessitating a method with reduced authentication overhead.
Innovation Solution
A method involving a communication initialization message sent from the aircraft to the ground entity within an IP datagram structure, which includes the aircraft's IP address, allowing the ground entity to obtain the aircraft's public key certificate directly, and a response message containing the ground entity's public key certificate, thereby reducing the number of messages and RF usage.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a traditional handshake protocol is used for secure communication establishment, then authentication security is improved, but RF resource consumption increases and handshake failure rate increases due to time-out constraints
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by pre-establishing and storing public key certificates in a certificate database before actual communication occurs. When an aircraft needs to establish secure communication, the ground entity can immediately retrieve the pre-stored certificate using the aircraft's identifier, eliminating the need for time-consuming certificate transmission over the constrained RF channel. This pre-preparation significantly reduces handshake time while maintaining security.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts the certificate transmission step from the RF communication channel by implementing a separate certificate distribution mechanism. Instead of exchanging certificates over the limited RF bandwidth during the handshake, the system extracts this function and performs it through alternative means (pre-loaded databases, ground-based distribution), leaving only essential authentication messages to be sent over RF, thereby reducing RF resource consumption and handshake duration.
2Reliability
If a traditional handshake protocol with multiple message exchanges is used, then authentication completeness is improved, but RF resource consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by pre-distributing and storing public key certificates in ground-based databases before communication needs arise. This allows the authentication process to skip the certificate transmission phase during actual handshakes, reducing the number of messages exchanged over the RF channel while maintaining complete authentication functionality through the pre-prepared certificate data.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a certificate database as an intermediary between the certificate authority and the communicating parties. This intermediary stores and manages certificates, allowing ground entities to retrieve certificates directly from the database rather than requiring direct transmission between all parties. This mediator reduces the message exchange volume by centralizing certificate management and enabling efficient lookup-based retrieval.
Data Source
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AI summary
A method for establishing a secure communication (20) between an aircraft (2) and a ground entity (4) includes: sending a communication initialization message (22) from the aircraft (2) to the ground entity (4), wherein the communication initialization message (22) is included in an IP datagram structure (122) and wherein the IP datagram structure (122) comprises an IP address of the aircraft (2); at the ground entity (4), obtaining a public key certificate of the aircraft (2) via the IP address of the aircraft (2); and sending a public key certificate of the ground entity (4) from the ground entity (4) to the aircraft (2) as part of a response message (24) to the communication initialization message (22).