Adaptive communication power control for enhancing attack resilience in UAV networks

Abstract

A swarm of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) comprises multiple UAVs that are capable of completing tasks beyond the capabilities of a single UAV. Due to the unique challenges of UAV missions, these vehicles often operate far from base stations, making network connectivity crucial for the successful completion of UAV swarm missions. However, existing methods do not account for strategies to maintain the overall connectivity of the UAV network when nodes are under attack. To address this issue, we propose a method named Adaptive Communication Power Control (ACPC) that dynamically adjusts UAV communication power to mitigate potential connectivity losses caused by node failures or malicious attacks. This adjustment ensures that the network can maintain information exchange among the remaining UAVs even in the event of disruptions. Additionally, we introduce a novel evaluation method to assess the overall connectivity of the network and validate ACPC through simulations of UAV swarm missions where some UAVs experience failures. Using this evaluation method, we measured the network’s state before and after attacks and recovery and calculated the additional energy consumption required by the UAVs. The results indicate that our method can increase the resilience of the UAV network by up to 5.36 times, while only raising the total communication energy consumption to 1.53 times.