An SDN-MQTT Based Communication System for Battlefield UAV Swarms

The UAV swarm is one of the most important developing trends in modern military operations. It is anticipated that in the near future, modern countries will embrace the use of UAV swarms across nearly every operating environment. The overall structure of a swarm, which is open, self-organizing, self-forming, and power saving friendly, makes it suitable for the battlefield, and it urgently needs to be defined. This article proposes an SDN and MQTT hybrid structure for battlefield UAV swarms, which is flexible, adaptable, intelligent, and controllable for topology, bandwidth, and payloads. The structure can adapt to the frequent change of swarm formation, support flexible data transmission among payloads, and improve swarm security in the battlefield. Furthermore, we propose a QoS-based multi-path routing framework, which calculates multiple disjointed paths from sources to destinations in order to enhance network performance. Case studies are listed and analyzed to validate the structure.