Sebetoa, Matlapane RNyareli, Teboho NThaba, Janes M2026-09-302026-09-302026-09978-1-68558-413-9http://hdl.handle.net/10204/14961Software Defined Radio mesh networks are useful for disconnected and mobile communication. However, a receiver still needs a way to verify the sender, ensure that the message was not changed, and reject old messages that are replayed. This paper combines a structured literature review with an offline experiment for a decentralized elliptic curve identity layer. The review covers security implementations for the Software Defined Radio physical layer, physical layer authentication and key generation, authentication in mobile and vehicular ad hoc networks, and trust systems based on blockchain. It identifies a gap between radio-layer protection, transmitter authentication, and cryptographic authentication at the message level for Software Defined Radio mesh systems. The proposed layer derives node identities from public keys, signs outgoing payloads, and verifies the trusted key list, signature, and replay state after the radio frame is recovered. The experiment measures payload growth, Low-Density Parity-Check block impact, payload efficiency, signing time, verification time, and security behavior for tampered, replayed, incorrect-key, and unknown-node messages. The results show that signing and verification complete in microseconds, while packet growth is the main cost for small payloads that make inefficient use of message blocks. The results indicate that decentralized elliptic curve authentication is practical for low-rate authenticated Software Defined Radio messaging when compact encoding, key identifiers, and batching are used to reduce airtime overhead.FulltextenSoftware-defined radioMesh networksAuthenticationElliptic curve cryptographyDecentralized identityConference Presentationn/a