PUF-based quantum-assisted authentication and ESP-assisted session key establishment for V2G networks

Abstract

Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology enables bidirectional communication and energy interaction between electric vehicles and the power grid. To ensure real-time response and secure communication, authentication protocols in V2G must provide privacy protection, maintain lightweight computation, and resist various malicious attacks. However, the advancement of quantum computing poses a significant threat to the security of classical cryptographic systems. Furthermore, as vehicles and charging piles are often exposed in public areas and may operate offline, the information stored within these devices requires robust physical protection.To address these challenges, this paper proposes a PUF-based quantum authentication and key agreement protocol for V2G scenarios, which deeply binds classical PUF responses with quantum gate transformation techniques to achieve an efficient joint verification mechanism. The protocol utilizes quantum channels as tamper-proof transmission media to provide secure verification for pre-shared PUF credentials. By fusing classical and quantum communication with hash functions, the proposed scheme achieves lightweight, anonymous, mutual, and dual-factor identity authentication alongside secure key agreement. This integration ensures both communication security and participant privacy. Security analysis and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed protocol is lightweight in edge-side classical computation. Under strict system assumptions, it can provide sufficient security and efficiency guarantees for the system, offering a valuable reference solution for V2G networks.