Towards Secure and Reliable Heterogeneous Real-time Telemetry Communication in Autonomous UAV Swarms

In the era of cutting-edge autonomous systems, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are becoming an essential part of the solutions for numerous complex challenges. This paper evaluates UAV peer-to-peer telemetry communication, highlighting its security vulnerabilities and explores a transition to a het-erogeneous multi-hop mesh all-to-all communication architecture to increase inter-swarm connectivity and reliability. Additionally, we suggest a symmetric key agreement and data encryption mechanism implementation for inter - swarm communication, to ensure data integrity and confidentiality without compromising performance.

Secure Multi-hop Telemetry Broadcasts for UAV Swarm Communication

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are evolving as adaptable platforms for a wide range of applications such as precise inspections, emergency response, and remote sensing. Autonomous UAV swarms require efficient and stable communication during deployment for a successful mission execution. For instance, the periodic exchange of telemetry data between all swarm members provides the foundation for formation flight and collision avoidance. However, due to the mobility of the vehicles and instability of wireless transmissions, maintaining a secure and reliable all-to-all communication remains challenging. This paper investigates encrypted and authenticated multi-hop broadcast communication based on the transmission of custom IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi data frames.