Research on resilience model of UAV swarm based on complex network dynamics

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) swarms are utilized in various missions and operated within an open environment that is prone to disruptions. The resilience of UAV swarms, an important requirement, mainly revolves around ensuring stable and uninterrupted operations. Malicious attacks can implement the adverse impacts of potential threats through swarm communication links. In this context, the SIS (Susceptible-, Infected-, Susceptible) method is suitable for describing the information transmission within UAV swarms. An enhanced resilience model of the UAV swarm is proposed in this study, which incorporates the factors of self-dynamics, dynamics of topology, dynamics of information transmission, and SIS into the complex network model. Self-dynamics refer to the internal dynamics of the drones. In this paper, dynamics of topology consist of three factors: the varying distance between drones, the incoming degrees of each drone, and the number of communication types between drones. Lastly, dynamics of information transmission are characterized by SIS. The model proposed in this paper has the capability to effectively capture changes in the network topology as well as the dynamics of the system, which are significant contributors to the loss of resilience. And then, the average number of susceptible drones is utilized as the metric to evaluate the resilience of the swarm. Furthermore, an experiment is conducted where a UAV swarm successfully carries out a surveillance mission to demonstrate the advantages of our proposed method. The proposed model not only enables the support of mission planning but also facilitates the design enhancements of UAV swarms.