Blockchain-based Multi-UAV Collaboration System
Background
The application of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has alleviated the problems across multiple fields, but the capabilites of a single UAV is limited. Deploying multiple UAVs to perform coordinated tasks has become a trend for the future. However, the vulnerability of UAV nodes makes them easy to be attacked or hijacked and turned into malicious nodes, which confuses more nodes and causes the UAV swarm to become paralyzed and out of control. At the same time, the limitations of UAV themselves, such as short communication distance, lack of direct communications among UAVs, limited battery capacity, small storage, and low computational power, all of which present sinificant challenges in research and development. Therefore, it has become an urgent need for researchers to design a UAV communication and cooperation system that can alleviate the above-mentioned problems.
This system aims to:
• Provide a secure communication platform for UAVs
• Extend working range
Design
Ad-hoc with olsr
To enlarge working distance, each UAV is equipped with an additional wireless NIC that supports ad-hoc mode.
However, nodes in such a network do not possess routing capabilities and therefore cannot perform multi-hop communication.
To address this limitation, the Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) protocol is considered as the routing protocol for the ad-hoc network,
enabling certain nodes to act as routers and thus achieving multi-hop communication.
Ethereum + private chain + smart contract
Ethereum can securely store and encrypt all data, allowing for later analysis while ensuring that the information remains unreadable to any unauthorized entities.
Moreover, the Proof of Authority (PoA) consensus mechanism can significantly reduce resource consumption such as computational overhead and power usage.
Also, pre-installed smart contracts guarantees the correctness of user-defined logic.
For the smart contract, the following requirements are defined and implemented:
- Each node is able to initiate a proposal and vote on existing proposals.
- The initiator can specify which drones are eligible to participate in a given activity. The details of this activity remain confidential.
- Each node can vote for the activity just once.
- The result of each activity should be visible exclusively to participating nodes.
- All voting records are securely stored on the blockchain and can be tracked and analyzed later.
- Once all participants have voted and at least half of the nodes approve, the activity will be automatically executed.
Test
Both drones take off successfully to the pre defined height.