Evaluation of the LDACS Cybersecurity Implementation

Abstract

Communication, Navigation and Surveillance (CNS) infrastructure in civil aviation must evolve as fast as possible to cope with all challenges posed by the growth of the worldwide population, globalization and the worldwide demand for more and more mobility. Analogue systems are replaced by digital means and automation is becoming much more important to be able to handle the large amount of new entrants in the air traffic system. Spectrum saturation must be solved by introducing digital systems and safety and security of the safety critical infrastructure surrounding civil aviation must be constantly updated to support the ever-growing system complexity. As one of the Future Communication Infrastructure (FCI) candidates we introduce LDACS as the very first true integrated CNS system worldwide. In previous works we have already analyzed its cybersecurity, developed a cybersecurity architecture with corresponding algorithms and demonstrated the improvement in cybersecurity due to our security additions. Here we implement the LDACS cybersecurity architecture and evaluate the impact of introduced security overhead on the LDACS system. We conclude that the proposed protection mechanisms successfully mitigate previously identified risks and only add minor time, data and computation overhead on top of the LDACS protocol stack. With this result, the security solutions are a good candidate to be included in the SESAR wave 2 updated LDACS specification.