A k-hop Constrained Reachability Based Proactive Connectivity Maintaining Mechanism of UAV Swarm Networks

Harsh or hostile environments may lead to node failure and connectivity degradation of a UAV swarm system. In order to maintain or restore the connectivity of a network in case of node failure, this paper proposes a mechanism to adjust the network topology to resist the impact caused by node failure. Firstly, a network model of a UAV swarm network based on k-hop constrained reachability is proposed. Secondly, a k-hop constrained reachability based proactive connectivity maintaining mechanism of UAV swarm network is presented. In this mechanism, each node identifies the network abnormality distributed according to k-hop reachability, and reports the observed abnormality to the master node; then, a virtual edge-based topology reconstruction algorithm is put forward for the master node to derive a topology reconstruction solution in a centralized way; afterwards, the solution is delivered to the slave nodes to reconfigure the network topology in parallel. Thirdly, a quantitative method is introduced to optimize the total travel distance of nodes, and a spanning tree-based method is designed to maintain the connectivity during the topology transformation process. Both theoretical analysis and simulation results have shown that: on the one hand, the proposed mechanism are effective in maintaining a UAV swarm’s connectivity in case of node failure; on the other hand, the proposed mechanism outperforms existing mechanisms in terms of fault tolerance, connectivity, and total travel distance, and it’s less affected by the failure rate.