The rapid evolution of autonomous systems has fundamentally transformed how sensor-driven decision-making is embedded into cyber-physical environments. Autonomous vehicles, unmanned aerial systems, industrial robots, and intelligent infrastructure increasingly rely on continuous streams of sensor data to operate safely and efficiently. However, the real-time nature of these systems exposes them to a wide spectrum of security vulnerabilities, particularly related to confidentiality, integrity, authenticity, and availability of sensor communications. Traditional cryptographic approaches, while theoretically robust, were largely designed for offline or latency-tolerant environments and therefore struggle to meet the stringent timing and computational constraints imposed by autonomous systems. This research article presents a comprehensive theoretical and analytical investigation into real-time encryption and secure communication mechanisms for sensor data within autonomous architectures, grounded explicitly in established cryptographic literature and contemporary research developments.
Central to this investigation is the growing body of work on real-time encryption strategies for autonomous systems, particularly the framework articulated by Patil and Deshpande (2025), which highlights the necessity of balancing cryptographic strength with temporal determinism in sensor communication pipelines. Building upon classical foundations of applied cryptography, network security, and real-time systems, this article synthesizes historical developments in symmetric encryption, key scheduling, selective encryption, and protocol-level security with emerging requirements specific to autonomous environments. The discussion critically evaluates the suitability of block ciphers such as AES in real-time contexts, explores lightweight and selective encryption techniques for bandwidth- and latency-sensitive sensor streams, and examines the implications of protocol-layer security mechanisms such as RTP security for time-critical data transmission.
Rather than proposing a novel algorithm, this study adopts a qualitative and analytical methodology to derive insights from comparative theoretical analysis, scholarly debate, and interpretive synthesis of prior findings. The results emphasize that real-time secure sensor communication is not solely a cryptographic problem but a systems-level challenge requiring coordinated design across encryption algorithms, key management schemes, communication protocols, and hardware constraints. The discussion further identifies unresolved tensions between security robustness and real-time performance, critiques prevailing assumptions in both cryptographic and autonomous systems research, and outlines future research directions focused on adaptive encryption, context-aware security, and cross-layer optimization. By offering an extensive and deeply elaborated academic discourse, this article aims to contribute a rigorous conceptual foundation for researchers and practitioners addressing secure real-time communication in autonomous systems.
