Table 1 Classification of reviewed authentication protocols for IoD.

Blockchain-Based

Wazid et al. (2021) ¹⁹, Karmegam et al. (2024) ²⁰, Aggarwal et al. (2025) ²¹, Ju et al. (2024) ⁷

High consensus overhead, latency, and energy consumption; communication/storage overhead unsuitable for lightweight UAVs.

PUF-Based

Ayebie et al. (2023) ⁹, Chaudhry et al. (2024) ²², Choi et al. (2025) ²³, Tian et al. (2022) ²⁴

Environmental susceptibility of PUF responses; need for fuzzy extractors and helper data increases storage/synchronization overhead; scalability issues in large swarms.

ECC-Based

Jan et al. (2022) ²⁵, Zhang et al. (2022) ²⁶, Gupta et al. (2024) ⁸

Scalar multiplication cost is high for UAVs; vulnerable to quantum attacks; not future-proof for long-term use.

Other Notable Approaches

Son et al. (2024) ²⁷, Zhao et al. (2024) ²⁸, Kumar et al. (2024) ²⁹, Kammoun et al. (2024) ³⁰, Shariq et al. (2024) ³¹

Partial quantum resistance or none; scalability and complexity challenges; lack of integrated lifecycle management.

IoD-Specific AKE Protocols

Mahmood et al. (2024) ³², Lee et al. (2023) ³³, Chaudhary et al. (2023) ³⁴

Lack of post-quantum security proof; no integrated key-update/revocation; limited scalability; informal-only security arguments.