Blockchain-Empowered Trusted Networking for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in the B5G Era

An unmanned aerial vehicle ad hoc network (UAANET) is an information sensing, analyzing, and transmitting network formed by multiple coordinated and collaborating UAVs. It is an emerging networking technology with a broad market prospect, but faces the problems of high dynamic topology and lack of trust. To address these issues, this article proposes a blockchain-em-powered trusted networking framework for UAANET, as well as the corresponding network architecture, protocol stack, key control signaling, and algorithms. To be more specific, blockchain is designed as a layer of distributed peer-to-peer security running on top of the physical UAANET. Three types of control signaling are designed, namely HELLO packet, topology control packet, and consensus packet. A max-min stable routing algorithm with three-dimensional link duration and a multipoint-relay-driven delegated Byzantine fault tolerance consensus mechanism are proposed for trusted networking of UAANET. The involved technical background and challenges are also detailed. These works together provide good references for scale deployment of UAANET in the near future.

Introduction

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), also known as a drone, is a type of aircraft that operates without a human pilot on board, but which can be remotely piloted from anywhere in the world with advanced communication networks. Recent technologies, such as 5G and blockchain, have allowed for the rapid development of many different kinds of advanced UAV use cases for various purposes [1]. The wide range of UAV applications includes aerial photography, emergency rescue, logistics transportation, agricultural monitoring, military search, strike, and so on [2]. Civil infrastructure is expected to dominate more than $45 billion market value of UAV usage [3]. This implies UAVs' broad market prospects in the near future. To meet the growing diversity of application needs, it is necessary to introduce multiple UAVs to coordinate and collaborate to complete a given task. This has created an emerging type of wireless communication network, namely the UAV ad hoc network (UAANET) [4]. As an emerging information sensing, analyzing, and transmitting network [5], UAANET serves as a bridge network connecting terrestrial information networks (TINs) and the space information network (SIN), which is an indispensable part of integrated space-terrestrial information networks. However, the rapid movement of UAVs within three-dimensional (3D) space makes UAANET a highly dynamic distributed network, which makes it difficult for UAVs to provide real-time link status information and network topology information for neighbor UAVs, and this makes it difficult to find the best routing path. Moreover, UAANET is vulnerable to intrusion, such as injection, forging identity, eavesdropping, hijacking, monitoring for network information, and other attacks. Therefore, to ensure information security and flight control safety, it is important to realize trusted networking for UAANET. To address these issues, a blockchain-empowered trusted networking framework is proposed for UAANET, in which an innovative max-min routing algorithm with 3D link duration is used for stable routing under dynamic network topology, and a multipoint relay (MPR)-driven delegated Byzantine fault tolerance (DBFT) consensus mechanism is proposed for trusted networking.