Abstract:

With the gradual opening of low-altitude airspace and the rapid development of the low-altitude economy， the amount of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles （UAVs） dramatically grows. The locations of UAVs are essential for ensuring flight safety and task efficiency. Consequently， aviation regulatory authorities in various countries and regions have issued Remote Identification （Remote ID） regulations， requiring UAVs to periodically broadcast their identifiers and locations in plain text via wireless channels. Although broadcasting locations of UAVs helps optimize airspace resource allocation and enhance task efficiency， openly broadcasting location data allows malicious users to obtain trajectory information and track UAVs， which could lead to severe consequences such as the capture of UAVs and the leakage of sensitive information. To address this issue， this paper proposes a location privacy protection mechanism for Remote ID-based UAV systems， introducing a location obfuscation scheme based on differential privacy. The scheme achieves privacy protection for UAVs’ location information by broadcasting obfuscated locations instead of actual locations， while ensuring the utility of the obfuscated data. Finally， we evaluate the effectiveness of the privacy protection method in two use cases involving UAV locations， revealing the trade-off mechanism between location privacy and utility in the next generation of UAV ecosystems with Remote ID regulations.

Key words: UAV, Remote ID, location privacy protection, low-altitude economy, differential privacy