Abstract: As a lightweight communication protocol between the UAV and the ground control center, MAVLink has the advantages of convenient configuration and easy invocation. A twoway channel is established between the UAV and the ground control center through MAVLink to transmit control information and status position data. However, MAVLink does not support encrypted communication and authentication and authorization mechanisms, which has potential risks of being attacked. The MAVSec protocol is an encrypted version of MAVLink proposed by Allouch A et al. In this paper, the performance of Chinese commercial cryptographic algorithms and foreign cryptographic algorithms in terms of encrypted transmission delay, memory usage and CPU consumption for MAVSec protocols using were evaluated different encryption algorithms. The experimental results show that, compared with other encryption algorithms, the ZUC algorithm in China’s commercial cryptographic algorithms has better performance and efficiency when transmitting command data, and occupies less CPU and memory resources. The application of ZUC algorithm in MAVLink improved the security of communication without affecting the performance, and saved the computing resources and battery consumption of the drone to the greatest extent.

Key words: unmanned aerial vehicle, cryptographic algorithm, security protocol, communication security, performance evaluation

摘要： MAVLink作为无人机与地面控制中心之间的轻量化通信协议，具有配置方便、调用简易的优点.无人机和地面控制中心之间通过MAVLink建立双向通道，传递控制信息和状态位置数据.然而MAVLink不支持加密通信和认证授权机制，具有潜在威胁，存在被攻击的风险.MAVSec协议是由Allouch等人提出的加密版的MAVLink，针对应用不同加密算法的MAVSec协议，分别从加密传输时延、内存占用和CPU损耗方面评估了我国商用密码算法和国外密码算法的性能.实验结果表明，与其他加密算法相比，我国商用密码算法中的ZUC算法在传输命令数据时具有更好的性能和效率，占用CPU和内存资源更少，将ZUC算法应用到MAVLink中可以在不影响性能的情况下提升通信的安全性，最大程度地节约无人机计算资源和电池损耗.

关键词: 无人机, 加密算法, 安全协议, 通信安全, 性能评估