Efficient and Secured Swarm Pattern Multi-UAV Communication

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) or drone, is an evolving technology in today's market with an enormous number of applications. Mini UAVs are developed in order to compensate the performance constraints imposed by larger UAVs during emergency situations. Multiple mini autonomous UAVs require communication and coordination for ubiquitous coverage and relaying during deployment. Multi-UAV coordination or swarm optimization is required for reliable connectivity among UAVs, due to its high mobility and dynamic topology. In this paper, a Secured UAV (S-UAV) model is proposed which takes the location of the UAVs as inputs to form a Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) among multiple drones with the help of a centralized controller. After WMN formation, efficient communication takes place using A* search, an intelligent algorithm that finds the shortest communication path among UAVs. Further, the S-UAV model utilizes cryptographic techniques such as Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and Blowfish to overcome the security attacks efficiently. Simulation results show that the S-UAV model offers higher throughput, reduced power consumption and guaranteed message transmission with reduced encryption and decryption time.