Implementation and evaluation of a secure communication solution for drones in a ROS2 network application

Abstract: In recent time, drones are everywhere. While commercial drones have shown great potential for hobby enthusiasts, it has shown a greater potential in military use and safeguarding. Currently, a significant amount of drones are being used for malicious means, such as espionage and warfare. Because of this, these drones has to be combated. One way to combat them is to use countermeasure drones. In this thesis, the objective is to implement and evaluate the security capabilities of SROS2 in a simulated environment. The thesis goal is to create a simulated environment along with two “ally” drones with secure communication and one “enemy” drone that will try to eavesdrop on their communication. Completing the thesis work was done by configuring a drone network using ROS2’s subscriber-publisher model and the use of evaluating methods such as Wireshark, tcpdump, and overhead performance tests to better understand and form a clearer picture of the inner-workings of the security capabilities offered by SROS2. The result yielded a simulated environment with three drones, where the “ally” drones successfully communicated with each other and the “enemy” drone failed in eavesdropping on the data travelling between them. SROS2’s security offered security but also showcased a decrease in latency and throughput performance, compared to a non-configured SROS2 network.