ADS-B Flight Data Acquisition and Secured Transmission

Air traffic control has undergone a revolution due to the emergence of Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) technology by offering real-time flight information in the realm of civil aviation. Unfortunately, when the ADS-B protocol was first proposed, it lacked encryption and other built-in security features, making it a prime target for fraudulent attacks. The goal of this work is to improve the security of ADS-B data during transmission to address various data vulnerabilities. By utilizing a combined approach that incorporates AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) and SHA-256 (Secure Hash Algorithm), along with hardware-based security measures through an ESP32 and LoRa transmission system, the system ensures robust data security. The research results indicate that AES encryption, while exhibiting slightly higher memory usage compared to SHA-256, maintains effective throughput, thereby ensuring operational efficiency without significantly impacting data transfer rates.