A Baseline-Resilience Assessment Method for UAV Swarms Under Heterogeneous Communication Networks

Abstract

The resilience assessment for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms is an effective method of measuring the risk resistance of UAV swarms. Although preliminary studies have been performed on the resilience assessment for UAV swarms, these studies still have limitations that cannot be ignored, such as network homogeneity, unreasonable resilience process models, and stringent mission baselines. These limitations reduce the reference value of the evaluation results. Therefore, a new baseline-resilience assessment method for UAV swarms is proposed in this article. First, a topological model of a UAV swarm heterogeneous communication network is constructed by introducing the concept of heterogeneous graphs. Second, regarding the integrity of the resilience process, an innovative resilience process model is established. Third, a mission-oriented UAV swarm baseline-resilience assessment method is proposed based on the topological and resilience process models. Finally, the effectiveness and the superiority of the proposed evaluation method are verified by simulations. The results show that the proposed evaluation method is more in line with actual situations than other evaluation methods and the obtained resilience value is more valuable for reference.