Trusted UAV Network Coverage Using Blockchain, Machine Learning, and Auction Mechanisms

• Published in: IEEE access Vol. 8; pp. 118219 - 118234
• Main Authors: Khan, Amjad Saeed, Chen, Gaojie, Rahulamathavan, Yogachandran, Zheng, Gan, Assadhan, Basil, Lambotharan, Sangarapillai
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 2020; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: auction; Blockchain; Cryptography; ergodic capacity; Machine learning; Monitoring; Provisioning; Quality of service; Quality of service architectures; Real time; service level agreement; support vector machine; Support vector machines; Unmanned aerial vehicles
• ISSN: 2169-3536; 2169-3536
• DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3003894

The UAV is emerging as one of the greatest technology developments for rapid network coverage provisioning at affordable cost. The aim of this paper is to outsource network coverage of a specific area according to a desired quality of service requirement and to enable various entities in the network to have intelligence to make autonomous decisions using blockchain and auction mechanisms. In this regard, by considering a multiple-UAV network where each UAV is associated to its own controlling operator, this paper addresses two major challenges: the selection of the UAV for the desired quality of network coverage and the development of a distributed and autonomous real-time monitoring framework for the enforcement of service level agreement (SLA). For a suitable UAV selection, we employ a reputation-based auction mechanism to model the interaction between the business agent who is interested in outsourcing the network coverage and the UAV operators serving in closeby areas. In addition, theoretical analysis is performed to show that the proposed auction mechanism attains a dominant strategy equilibrium. For the SLA enforcement and trust model, we propose a permissioned blockchain architecture considering Support Vector Machine (SVM) for real-time autonomous and distributed monitoring of UAV service. In particular, smart contract features of the blockchain are invoked for enforcing the SLA terms of payment and penalty, and for quantifying the UAV service reputation. Simulation results confirm the accuracy of theoretical analysis and efficacy of the proposed model.