Network approach for resilience evaluation of a UAV swarm by considering communication limits

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm is a group of numerous UAVs performing tasks in a self-organized and self-adaptive manner to achieve an overall mission objective. Currently, the model of a UAV swarm is based on complex networks, where each UAV is represented as a node and each link denotes information exchange between UAVs. However, existing studies do not consider the limited communication range of each UAV. In this study, an improved UAV swarm model is proposed by incorporating the effect of limited communication range into the existing model. A UAV swarm mitigates the effects of possible threats and disruptions via self-adaptation; hence, it is suitable to use resilience to evaluate its performance. An improved resilience metric is proposed based on the difference between the swarm's performance and its standard system performance. A case study is conducted in which a UAV swam is called to implement a surveillance mission. Results and comparisons with extant studies indicate that the proposed model and metric lead to a more realistic method to evaluate the resilience of a UAV swarm. The proposed model and metric can be used to support mission planning and the design of a UAV swarm.