A Distributed Agent-Based Framework for a Constellation of Drones in a Military Operation (original) (raw)

A seamless communication capability is important in military operations. Likewise, enhanced security, increased capacity, and robust communication mechanisms are vital for humanitarian and disaster-response operations. Often, a system of wide-band satellites is employed for real-time exchange of information and over-the-horizon control, but the communications are prone to denial of service (DoS) attacks, and delayed redeployment. Hence, a swarm of drones could be deployed in mission-critical operations in times of urgency for a secured and robust distributed-intercommunication which is essential for survivability and successful completion of missions. In this paper, a distributed-agent-based framework for secure and reliable information exchange between drones in a constellation is proposed. The framework comprises a mechanism for path planning simulation and estimation, a flexible network architecture for improved clientserver(C/S) and peer-to-peer (P2P) connectivity, as well as agents for identity authentications and secure communications. The framework has been simulated and verified with results showing promise.