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Lightweight Blockchain Assisted Secure Routing of Swarm UAS

Networking
Jian Wanga , Yongxin Liua , Shuteng Niua and Houbing Songa,∗
a Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, FL, USA

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: The prominent capacities of 5G New Radio (5G NR) cellular networking drive the rapid development
5G Cellular Networking of many fields. The ubiquitous implementations of 5G NR cellular networking also provide swarm
Swarm UAS Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) networking the feasibility of scalable deployment and smart con-
Lightweight Blockchain trol. However, the conveniences derived from 5G NR also bring other vulnerabilities to swarm UAS
Secure Routing networking. The advanced capacities of 5G NR enable attackers to commit disruptive attacks to
Passive Synchronization swarm UAS networking more severely and quickly. The requirement for the security of swarm UAS
networking is imminent.
In this paper, we propose a lightweight Blockchain-based secure routing algorithm for swarm UAS
networking. We leverage the lightweight Blockchain to enhance the security of routing of swarm UAS
networking which is based on 5G NR cellular networking. Different from the conventional routing
algorithms, the proposed algorithm with lightweight Blockchain can avoid the malicious connections
from attackers, recognize the malicious UASs and mitigate the attacks from malicious UASs. Concur-
rently, the proposed algorithm are swarm UAS oriented which aims to extend the deployment of swarm
UAS networking on a large scale. Compared with Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake(PoS), we
adopt pheromone to estimate the traffic status of each UAS in swarm UAS networking, construct con-
sensus for swarm UAS networking with Proof-of-Traffic (PoT) and synchronize the updated blocks for
lightweight Blockchain passively under the constraints of energy consumption. The evaluation shows
PoT can reduce the routing consumption in the processes of consensus construction and blocks syn-
chronization. Compatible with the constrained resource of swarm UASs, the lightweight Blockchain-
assisted approach, proposed in this paper, can maintain the efficiency of swarm UAS networking.

1. Introduction extends the range of execution and the complexity of mis-

The instantaneous evolution of 5G New Radio (5G NR)
cellular networking fuels many fields (like industrial manu-
factures [10], remote health care [31], and cloud education
[35]) to achieve immense advancement. Compared with the
conventional mobile communication, 5G NR can provide
more improvements on ultra low latency [51], efficient spec-
trum [48], capable traffic [39], dense connections [49], expe-
rienced throughput [38] and efficient networking [13]. With
the assistance of 5G NR, implementations can improve ef-
ficient interactions between different platforms and different
devices which can enhance the performance of the imple-
mentation in practice. The massive networking capacity can
enable implementations to deploy on a large scale with man-
aged controllability and reliable quality of communication.
Simultaneously, the robust networking can be achieved with
the efficient networking and dense connections of 5G NR.
The outstanding characteristics of 5G NR stimulate mobile
communication-based implementations to evolve more scal-
able, efficient, collaborative [14].
Swarm Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) can execute
multiple and complex missions in parallel which can achieve
the efficiency and safety for workers, officials, and civil-
ians. Compared with single UAS and UAS fleet, swarm UAS
∗ Corresponding author
WANGJ14@my.erau.edu (J. Wang); LIUY11@my.erau.edu (Y. Liu);
SHUTENGN@my.erau.edu (S. Niu); Houbing.Song@erau.edu (H. Song)
http://www.songlab.us/ (H. Song)
ORCID (s): 0000-0001-6043-6971 (J. Wang); 0000-0003-4527-8623 (Y.
Liu); 0000-0003-2631-9223 (H. Song)
sion complement. Equipped with different devices in UAS,
swarm UAS is capable to satisfy the mission requirement on
different scales. Concurrently, the ultra capacities of 5G NR
also construct the excellent backbone of swarm UAS net-
working which enables swarm UASs to deliver feedback in
real time and execute intrusions in quick response. With en-
hanced 5G NR, swarm UASs can achieve the robust con-
nections in the inter and intra swarms which enable swarm
UASs complete complex missions collaboratively.
However, the enhancements derived from 5G NR also
bring conveniences for attackers to penetrate swarm UAS
networking which can cause a catastrophic loss for the pub-
lic properties and safety. Without secure routings, the at-
tackers can leverage a malicious UASs to join swarm UASs.
The access to swarm UAS networking can allow attackers
to play attacks, like eavesdropping, hijacking, and man-in-
the-middle [40]. Once the swarm UAS networking is ma-
nipulated by the attackers, the attackers can leverage ultra
capacities to navigate the compromised swarm UASs rush
into restricted areas. With the mobility and the volatile bat-
teries, each UAS, under the manipulation of the attacker, in
the swarm can be transferred into a flying threat to public
properties and safety [9]. Thus, a secure routing algorithm
is needed to avoid malicious connections from attackers.
The conventional secure routings for swarm UAS net-
working focus on the encryption of packets [15]. The
symmetric session key to encrypt the packets which could
achieve the security between the point-to-point communi-
cation with the sacrifice of the latency and overhead of the

Jian Wang et al.: Preprint submitted to Elsevier Page 1 of 13

© 2020 published by Elsevier. This manuscript is made available under the Elsevier user license
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 Lightweight Blockchain Assisted Secure Routing of Swarm UAS Networking
system [45]. At the same time, conventional methods can
not avoid re-display attacks in communication. The deploy-
ment of swarm UAS networking on a large scale requires
the distributed security to defense the attacks from malicious
UASs. The distributed security requires the conventional ap-
proaches afford much computational resource allocation and
communication resource consumption which poses an im-
mense challenging for the current secure approaches. Most
importantly, the conventional methods can not satisfy the re-
quirement of energy efficiency and scalable deployment.
In this paper, we leverage a lightweight Blockchain to
assist swarm UASs to improve the security of routing. With
lightweight Blockchain, swarm UASs can prevent the ma-
licious UAS connection to swarm UAS networking, rec-
ognize the malicious UASs in swarm and mitigate the at-
tacks from malicious UASs. Different from the conventional
consensus constructions, our contribution is that we lever-
age pheromone to estimate the traffic status of each UAS
in swarm UAS networking. Based on the traffic status, the
swarm UAS networking constructs consensus with Proof-of-
Traffic (PoT). Different from Proof-of-Work (PoW), Proof-
of-Stake (PoS), we synchronize the updated blocks with pas-
sive broadcast which can reduce the additional routings un-
der the energy constraint swarm UAS networking. The eval-
uation shows PoT can reduce the routing consumption in
the processes of consensus construction and blocks synchro-
nization. In this paper, we leverage passive broadcast to re-
duce the burden of energy consumption and computational
resource allocation for the swarm UAS networking. With
PoT updating, UAS in swarm UAS networking can reduce
the consumption on the priority competition for the blocks
generation. Compatible with the constrained resource of
swarm UASs, the lightweight Blockchain-assisted approach
proposed in this paper can maintain the efficiency of swarm
UAS networking.
The paper is organized as follows: Section I presents our
motivation and contributions. Section II illustrates the re-
lated work of Blockchain on UASs. Section III describes the
methodology of our proposed approach. Section IV presents
the evaluation of the proposed methodology. Section V con-
cludes the paper.
2. Related Work
With the advantages of immutability and data integrity,
Blockchain as a promising technology has been imple-
mented in many fields to improve security and efficiency.
Apart from the outstanding implementation of cryptocur-
rency, Blockchain also plays an important role in improving
the security and efficiency of UASs, networking, Indus-
trial Internet of Things (IIoT) which is considered as the
promising core technology to construct the Cyber Physical
System (CPS). In this section, we mainly exhibit the re-
lated work of Blockchain which obtains Blockchain assisted
UAS, Blockchain enhanced Networking. Based on the over-
head consumption and memory constraints, lightweight
Blockchain is implemented to be compatible with the re-
Jian Wang et al.: Preprint submitted to Elsevier
source constraint Internet of Things (IoT) devices and UAS
networking. Thus, we also present the literature review of
lightweight Blockchain in this section briefly.
2.1. Blockchain assisted UAS
The advantage of convenient controllability stimulates
civilian and industrial implementations to deploy UASs on
a large scale. However, the vulnerabilities to attacks slug-
gish the processing of UAS deployment. With immutabil-
ity and data integrity, many researchers attempted to explore
the feasibility and potentials of Blockchain on the enhance-
ment of security of UASs. The majority of research con-
siders Blockchain as static storage which contains sensitive
information. The Blockchain is implemented to support au-
thentication. The main advantages of static Blockchain can
maintain the integrity of the data and improve the efficiency
of the authentication processing. Integrity and distribution
provide the security of data transmission and storage.
With the motivation of avoidance of modification of link
data for marine surveillance, The authors deployed verifi-
cation information distributively on the ground control cen-
ter. UASs with a connection can access the identification
storage on the server to verify each boat in the surveillance
sea area [17]. However, the vulnerability of this approach
is that it will lead to catastrophic loss once UAS is compro-
mised to attackers. The security of data sharing is important
that can prevent malicious access to swarm UAS networking.
Based on this requirement, the authors, in [24], proposed
a Blockchain based architecture which can be implemented
into the distributed business system to improve the security
of data sharing. The threat from data is not limited to the
sharing but also includes data acquisition. The swarm UAS,
as the powerful tools for gathering data from IIoT devices,
can save many labors and energy consumption. In [20], the
authors presented a Blockchain based exploration of secu-
rity and data integrity on data acquisition of IoT devices
via swarm UASs. The UASs in swarm leverage 𝜋 − ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑠ℎ
bloom filter to verify the identity of IoT devices and upload
the collected data derived from authenticated IIoT devices to
servers. The server adds the collected data into Blockchain.
Different from [20], the authors, in [19], leverage UASs to
collect data generated from IIoT devices and stored the col-
lected data in Blockchain at Mobile Edge Computing (MEC)
server. The main flaw of this approach that it is vulnerable
to injection attacks when the UAS decrypts the data with-
out the identification of IIoT devices. To mitigate the cy-
ber threats and data integrity, the authors leverage UAS to
collect the data derived from wearable devices on the users
and upload it with MEC to the cloud. Thereafter, the cloud
stores the collected data into Blockchain [18]. Another at-
tempt, in [5], aims to provide an efficient Blockchain-as-a-
Service (BaaS) support for IIoT applications. The authors
leverage the Blockchain to store the data generated from IIoT
devices. The data collected from IIoT devices is recorded as
a mining task, and the Blockchain peer decides how to pro-
cess tasks, verify tasks, and transaction records according to
energy consumption [3]. The Blockchain server is the core
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 Lightweight Blockchain Assisted Secure Routing of Swarm UAS Networking
of the architecture of the IIoT system with the Baas-MEC
support process and verifies the compute-intensive mining
tasks of the peers. The authors, in [41], leverage consortium
Blockchain to establish the distributed shared database to
minimize computational consumption. In the computation-
intensive stages, MEC assists in Blockchain creation and
verification.
The above shows Blockchain can protect the data in-
tegrity with the advantage of immutability effectively and
securely. There is another branch aiming to extend the au-
thentication of swarm UASs by storing identification into the
blocks of Blockchain.
To prevent malicious joint of swarm UASs access, the
authors, in [27], tried to enhance the trust of named data
networking-based Fly Ad hoc Networking (FANET) and
mitigate content poisoning. They stored the interest content
and identification of UAS into Blockchain. Once the simi-
lar interest content is detected, the content will be delivered
to the ground station to verify the source and the interest-
ing content. If the content is from the attackers, the source
will be recorded and alarm to the system to bind the pack-
ets from the source. In [21], the authors utilized the hyper
ledgers to store validation of UAS into Blockchain which
can authenticate the UAS with mobile ground stations. The
UAS without verification in the Blockchain can not access
swarm networking. Inspired by randomness improvement,
in [42], the authors added the intrusions and GPS informa-
tion into Blockchain to surveillance the operation and sta-
tus perpetually. Authenticated by Blockchain on the cloud,
the information can be delivered between ground stations
and UAS. Association with perpetual connections and re-
liable topologies decreases the security and efficiency of hi-
erarchical networking. In [44], the authors bundled differ-
ent systems into multiple Blockchains to improve the secu-
rity of drone caching through users via MEC and optimized
the multiple Blockchains with neural networking. The sim-
ulation shows that the approach can improve the probability
of connectivity to 0.9900 and decrease energy consumption
to 0.6034. Different from implementations of storage, the
authors consider the UAS and ground devices as nodes in
Blockchain and chain the devices to maintain the integrity
of the whole system. Based on the resilience of Blockchain,
the authors leverage Blockchain, constructed by ground con-
trol station, to store group keys and manage the membership
certificates of FANET. Based on longest-lost-chain mecha-
nism and collaboration of neighbors, nodes on the network-
ing can recover the lost blocks underneath different attack
models effectively [29].
Indeed, Blockchain can improve the security and the ef-
ficiency of swarm UAS networking and system. However,
most implementations need servers to store identification.
The mechanism requires high quality communication be-
tween swarm UASs and ground terminals in real time. This
poses an immense challenging for the construction of relia-
bility and flexibility for 5G NR cellular communication and
deployment of swarm UAS networking on a large scale.
Jian Wang et al.: Preprint submitted to Elsevier
2.2. Blockchain enhanced Networking
Networking is critical to the performance of swarm UAS.
The quality of performance of swarm UAS is dependent
on the efficient packets delivery and intrusion execution
in time which is based on networking capacities deeply.
Efficiency, reliability, and resilience are pivotal factors to
evaluate networking. With the unique characteristics of
Blockchain, many researchers explored the potential of en-
hancement on networking. The natural architecture of net-
working for Blockchain is Peer-to-Peer (P2P) which poses
an immense challenge for the implementations on differ-
ent architectures of networking. However, there are still
many researchers exploring the feasibility of Blockchain on
other architectures. In this section, the following parts aim
at 1) routing of Blockchain; 2) Blockchain assisted Vehi-
cle Ad hoc Networking (VANET) and Mobile Ad hoc Net-
working (MANET). The networking research of Blockchain
mainly focuses on the routing enhancement and assistance
of VANET. The implementations of Blockchain on routing
enhancement and assistance of VANET are an important ref-
erence for the exploration of Blockchain based FANET en-
hancement. FANET enhancement of Blockchain is exhib-
ited on the above, the following will mainly present the ex-
ploration of VANET and MANET.
2.2.1. Routing of Blockchain
The routing of Blockchain mainly focuses on the net-
working routing of Blockchain and Blockchain to enhance
networking routing. The previous one focuses on the im-
provement of routing algorithms on the security and effi-
ciency of Blockchain deployment. The latter focuses on the
implementation of Blockchain on the enhancement of differ-
ent architectures of networking.
The main problems for Blockchain deployment are scal-
ability and synchronization. In terms of the two problems,
the efficient and light routing algorithms are implemented to
the P2P networking to extend the capacities of Blockchain.
With the motivation of improvement in synchronization and
minimum of the processing and transmission delay through
reduced duplicated transmissions, the authors, in [30], ap-
plied the minimum spanning tree to reduce the routing cost
for nodes communication. Different from the P2P network-
ing, the packets are transmitted through multiple hops to
achieve less latency between nodes’ broadcast. Similar work
in [12], the authors propose a consensus of first-leader-then-
block, before the leader constructs blocks in Blockchain net-
working, the credential of the leader is validated by the
clients [16]. Thereafter, the leader builds the block into
Blockchain with optimized routings in the Blockchain net-
working which could mitigate the duplication of message
broadcast and reduce the risk of Denial of Service (DoS) at-
tacks. To improve the acceptance ratio of transactions with
low routing overhead, the authors proposed a hash timelock
contract to improve the security of the P2P transaction. In
the routing, the mechanism will punish the nodes who are
dishonest and refuse to forward packets to next hops [52].
Different from [52], the authors, in [53], constructed two
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 Lightweight Blockchain Assisted Secure Routing of Swarm UAS Networking
payment paths to improve the success rate for payment via
P2P. With the modification of the hash timelock contract, the
transaction has one more flexibility of cancellation.
Blockchain enhanced routing has the advantages of im-
mutability and distribution. With awareness of latency, the
author studied the round trip time measurement for inter-
domain networking. The round trip time could be utilized
to validate the anomalies of two-side data integrity [4]. The
measurement is stored in the blocks of Blockchain. Simi-
lar methodology like [4], the authors deployed Blockchain
to validate the prefix of border gateway broadcast and mark
the bogus routings to mitigate the risk of DoS attacks in
blocks of Blockchain. Blockchain as a database stores the
routing report which is considered as a reference to evaluate
the reliability and reputation of the router. The routers with a
low reputation will be marked and isolated to eliminate the
threat of attacks [28]. Information on the whole network-
ing is stored into the Blockchain which allows all nodes to
access. The nodes can calculate a routing which is less traf-
fic load and interference [26]. Securing users’ capsule from
cross-side channel attacks, Blockchain stores request from
senders which can authenticate the identity of the senders.
With authentication, the senders can access the specific host
capsule on the cloud [37].
The conventional approaches of Blockchain are con-
strained of synchronizations which require extra computa-
tional resource allocation and overhead of system to broad-
cast the new generated blocks that also is a prominent flaw
in the deployment on the mobile devices, especially swarm
UAS. The lightweight blockchain methods compatible with
compact UAS on a large scale are required.
2.2.2. Blockchain assisted VANET and MANET
With the ubiquitous of automatic self-driving, VANET
construction is becoming pivotal to the safety and security
of the automobiles. The 5G NR deployment on a large scale
stimulates the development of VANET. The majority of re-
search efforts focus on the improvement of security and effi-
ciency. However, synchronization is a challenge for the de-
ployment of Blockchain on VANET. Meanwhile, the mobil-
ity of VANET decreases the reliability of Blockchain. With
the improvement of security and trust on the vehicular IIoT,
trust evaluation based on Proof-of-Stake (PoS) is imple-
mented to manage the Blockchain generation. The vehicle
with a priority of management of the Blockchain can collect
the road information and store it into the Blockchain which
can be reliable proof for the investigation of traffic accidents
[50]. The mobility of VANET has a significant effect on the
new block generation of Blockchain. In [25], the authors in-
vestigated the effect of the interval of rendezvous of VANET
on the Blockchain generation. The results show that the con-
tention window size in the Blockchain. In VANET, trustwor-
thiness is important to the security and privacy of users. The
common methods of privacy management are to keep the
users’ public key and smart contract in Blockchain automat-
ically [36]. With optimized synchronization of Blockchain,
the credentials of vehicles can be achieved [33]. Further,
Jian Wang et al.: Preprint submitted to Elsevier
malicious vehicles in VANET need to be marked and mit-
igated to improve the security of users and public proper-
ties. The combination of trustworthiness and attributes of
vehicles is encrypted into Blockchain to provide the tamper-
resistant and traceable services for authentication between
vehicles to infrastructures [47]. However, the conventional
key management relies on distributed k-anonymity of ve-
hicles in VANET which has high possibilities of causing
privacy leakage and the trustworthiness of participants lost.
Based on this flaw, a Blockchain based behavior tracer is im-
plemented to store the historical behaviors and identify the
malicious vehicles in VANET [34] and the evaluation shows
the tracer can mitigate the malicious vehicles in VANET ef-
fectively.
Different from VANET, MANET is a constraint with its
limited computational resources and low throughput of net-
working which is sluggish for researchers to deploy effec-
tive Blockchain on a large scale. The prominent researches
mainly concentrate on routing and security data collection.
The absence of trustworthiness and reputation of partic-
ipating nodes in MANET can cause unreliable handover
which is severe to the security of MANET. As an indica-
tor of malicious levels, the behaviors of routers is recorded
into Blockchain and quantified with reputation. The iden-
tified malicious routers will be removed and isolated from
MANET [8]. Based on the immutable transaction, the his-
tory of routing discovery of collecting data in MANET is
stored in Blockchain. Mixed with secure tag, each success-
ful routing discovery is available, reliable, and secure in
Blockchain. Without authentication, the nodes can not ac-
cess the routing information which can avoid re-display at-
tacks efficiently [32]. Blockchain can provide outstanding
storage services for MANET to maintaining security and pri-
vacy. However, the current researches still need to meet the
challenge between constraint resources and synchronization
on a large scale.
Blockchain implementations on VANET and MANET
provide pioneering experiences for the deployment on the
swarm UAS networking on a large scale securely. Due to
the power supplements of VANET and MANET are higher
than FANET, the necessities for the lightweight blockchain
are not urgent. The development of blockchain implemen-
tations on VANET and MANET can stimulate the evolution
of blockchain implementations of FANET partially.
2.3. Lightweight Blockchain
The conventional Blockchain deployment has over-
whelmed requirements of computational resources and
synchronization to the system which is hard to embed
Blockchain into the IIoT devices. The constrained com-
putational resources and lifetime stimulate the evolution of
lightweight Blockchain. With remaining of the main back-
bone of Blockchain, currently, the majority of researches
focuses on performance decreasing and functionality de-
creasing.
The performance decreasing focuses on the reduce of
computational resources and synchronization frequency to
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 Lightweight Blockchain Assisted Secure Routing of Swarm UAS Networking
achieve the balance between the security and energy con-
sumption of IIoT devices [2]. Based on the data integrity
of IIoT communication, the miner of Blockchain is simpli-
fied to maintenance consensus in honest parties which aims
to manipulate the whole nodes in networking [22]. With
reduced synchronization frequency and minimum intrusion
execution space, the lightweight Blockchain based IIoT de-
vices can achieve efficiency and security [43]. The conven-
tional Blockchain needs to consume many computational re-
sources on PoW. The elimination of PoW can reduce the re-
quirement of Blockchain and is suitable for the deployment
of IIoT devices [46].
Different from performance decreasing, the functional-
ity decreasing focus on lowing the computational burden on
embedded devices. The embedded devices afford the data
collection and verification processing, and the computation
and storage tasks are completed on the clouds [6]. With op-
timized communication cost and adjustable updating period,
the lightweight Blockchain can improve the quality of com-
munication and privacy of IIoT devices [11]. Another at-
tempt is on consensus construction. A consortium consen-
sus is applied in the lightweight Blockchain generation. Re-
placed with simplified Proof-of-Authority (PoA), the IIoT
devices can execute the lightweight Blockchain effectively
and efficiently [1]. A Proof of Block and Trade (PoBT) con-
sensus is implemented to reduce the computation time and
memory requirements for IIoT devices [7].
The lightweight Blockchain can improve data integrity,
efficiency, and overhead reduction on IIoT devices. Both
performance decreasing and function decreasing are two
promising approaches [23] to improve the deployment of
IIoT devices. However, there are still more specific opti-
mizations to need to pursue to adapt to different scenarios.
Corresponding to the different power supplement require-
ment, the adaptive balance between blockchain generation
and abortion is required to release the burden of storage
space and efficiency, computational resource allocation, and
communication efficiency in real time and periodical aggre-
gations.
3. Methodology
Enhanced with 5G NR, swarm UAS networking can
achieve more capacities of throughput, latency, robustness,
and spectrum efficiency. The advantages of swarm UAS net-
working also provide conveniences to attackers to penetrate
the swarm UAS networking more severely. With the manip-
ulation of swarm UAS networking, the attackers can trans-
fer the UAS in swarm into malicious threats to the public
properties and safety. The secure and robust swarm UAS
networking is urgent to construct to mitigate the threat of
attackers. In this section, we aim to propose a novelty ap-
proach to implement lightweight Blockchain to swarm UAS
networking which can improve the security and efficiency
of swarm UAS networking. Constrained with the limited
energy consumption and computational resource, the con-
ventional Blockchain is hard to implement into the swarm
Jian Wang et al.: Preprint submitted to Elsevier
Hop Source UAS Destination UAS Malicious UAS
Figure 1: Attackers in Swarm UAS Networking
UAS networking. To simplify the processing of computa-
tion, we propose a novel consensus construction which can
achieve better efficiency than PoW and PoS. We utilize the
traffic states of each UAS, marked by pheromone, to esti-
mate the authority of each UAS. Based on the traffic status,
the swarm UAS networking constructs consensus with PoT.
To save routing construction, PoT synchronizes the updated
blocks with the passive broadcast. The specification of the
proposed approach is as follows.
3.1. Problem Statement
The performance of the mission complement of swarm
UAS is dependent on the quality of swarm UAS networking
seriously. Each intrusion and captured data can be deliv-
ered to the destination efficiently which relies on the swarm
UAS networking effectiveness. As Figure 1 shows, swarm
UAS can achieve an immense swarm to finish the mission
which has a requirement of complexities and simultaneous-
ness. The ubiquitous deployment of swarm UAS accelerates
the efficiency of civilian development and industrial produc-
tion. Concurrently, swarm UAS enables human beings to
finish missions with remote control in some poisonous envi-
ronments and safety absence scenarios.
However, once the attacker scatters malicious UAS into
the swarm UAS which can lead to a catastrophic loss for the
controllers. The malicious UAS can play attacks (eavesdrop-
ping, injection, man-in-the-middle, etc.) to manipulate the
swarm UAS networking. The malicious UAS in the swarm
(as Figure 1 shows) refuse to deliver packets which can de-
crease the bandwidth, throughput, and robustness of routing
between the source and destination. Further, the malicious
can transmit malicious packets to mislead the normal UAS
commit aggressive motion to disrupt the whole mission of
swarm UAS.
It is critical to recognize the malicious UAS in the swarm
and prevent the access of malicious UAS into swarm UAS
packets delivery. The normal UAS in the swarm UAS net-
working needs to block the packets derived from the ma-
licious ones to maximize the elimination of injection from
attackers. With the beamforming of 5G NR, the UAS in the
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 Lightweight Blockchain Assisted Secure Routing of Swarm UAS Networking

swarm can deliver the packets to the desired UAS with beam
steering. The secure hops of routing can prevent the mali-
cious UAS eavesdrop and inject the packets delivered be-
tween normal UAS. Thus, the routing problem of the swarm
UAS networking is converted to a secure hop selection. At
the same time, the joining UAS from the outer swarm needs
authentication to assure its identification. The conventional
Blockchain approaches are static storage in the swarm UAS
which distributed all the information in the all swarm which
needs many computational resources to broadcast the up- Hop with
dated blocks. And also, if one UAS in the swarm is com- Pheromone Source UAS Destination UAS Malicious UAS
promised to the attackers which have high possibilities of
identification leakage and manipulation of attackers. The at-
Figure 2: Security Routing of Swarm UAS Networking
tackers can utilize the brutal methods to explore the secrets
of each block information which is sensitive to the privacy
of ground controllers.
to the last 𝑢𝑛 is less than 𝜋. For the next hops of 𝑢𝑠𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑐𝑒 :
3.2. Blockchain Assisted Secure Routing 𝑈(𝑠𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑐𝑒, ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑠) = {𝑢𝑛 | 𝜃(𝑉⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃗, 𝑉⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃗) ≤ 𝜋} (2)
To achieve secure routing for swarm UAS networking, (𝑠, 𝑑) (𝑠, 𝑛)

we leverage the lightweight Blockchain to secure the rout-
ing hops selection in the swarm UAS networking. Different
from the conventional Blockchain implementations, we con-
sider each UAS, 𝑢𝑛 , as a block container in Blockchain which
obtains its whole detailed identification, 𝐼𝑛 , for verification
and block digests, 𝐻𝑁 , of the whole Blockchain for authen-
tication.
∑
𝑁
𝐻𝑁 = 𝐻𝑖 , 𝐻𝑖 ∈ {𝑢𝑛 | 𝑢𝑛 ∉ 𝑈𝑚 }
𝑖=1
Thereafter, the next hops, 𝑈(𝑛, ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑠) , for 𝑢𝑛 is :
𝑈(𝑛, ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑠) = {𝑢𝑛 | 𝜃(𝑉⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃗, 𝑉⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃗) ≤ 𝜋} (3)
(𝑠, 𝑑) (𝑛, 𝑛+1)
With bundle hops for selection, 𝑢𝑛 needs to select the
next secure hops from 𝑈(𝑛, ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑠) . 𝑢𝑛 checks the block digest
record from 𝐻𝑁 . The next 𝑢𝑛 in 𝑈(𝑛, ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑠) with record 𝐻𝑛
can be selected for the next secure hop. The malicious UAS
and the unauthenticated UAS will not be selected as the next
(1)
hops.

Here, 𝑈𝑚 is a set of malicious UAS in recognition; 𝑢𝑛 is each
UAS 𝑛, in swarm 𝑈𝑛 . 𝐻𝑖 is each block digest of Blockchain
for the current swarm UAS. This information is stored in
flash memory previously before UAS is taking off. We as-
sume attackers can not compromise the UAS is joining the
swarm UAS networking. Due to the characteristics of beam-
forming of 5G NR, the power leakage on the side lopes is
suppressed theoretically which can be neglected. In our as-
sumption, without directional transmission, the malicious
UAS can not recover the signal with side lopes leakage of
𝑈(𝑛, ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑠) = {𝑢𝑛 | 𝑢𝑛 ∈ 𝑈𝑛𝑒𝑖𝑔𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑠 − 𝑈𝑚 } (4)
Each time, 𝑢𝑛 updates the mark of the next-hop with
pheromone 𝑃 ℎ𝑛 (shown as Figure 2) derived from the suc-
cessful routing and packet delivery. The pheromone stim-
ulation 𝜏 is dependent on the latency of 𝑙𝜏 of each routing.
The next-hop with the highest pheromone indicates the 𝑢𝑛
has more busy traffic which is updated frequently and hard
to be compromised.
∑
𝑚

beamforming. 𝑃 ℎ𝑛 ← (1 − 𝛼) × 𝑃 ℎ𝑛 + △𝑃 ℎ𝑛 (5)
As Figure 2 shows, each UAS in the swarm, delivers 𝑘=1

packets to its neighbors, 𝑈𝑛𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑠 , directly with beamform- Here, 𝛼 is decay parameter of pheromone, 𝛼 ∈ (0, 1).
ing. The neighbors selection, 𝑈ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑠 , is based on the desti- and △𝑃 ℎ𝑛 is:
nation, 𝑢𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 , and the record of digest in Blockchain,
1
𝐻𝑁 , which is stored on the flash memory. 𝑢𝑑𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 ∈ 𝑈𝑛 . △𝑃 ℎ𝑛 = (6)
The source UAS, 𝑢𝑠𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑐𝑒 in Figure 2, sends Routing Request 𝑙𝑛
(RREQ) to 𝑢𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 for constructing routings for com- With less latency, the hop is prone to be selected easily which
munication. 𝑢𝑠𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑐𝑒 ∈ 𝑈𝑛 . Apparently, 𝑢𝑛 acquire loca- also indicates 𝑢𝑛 obtains the more busy traffic in the local net-
tions of other UAS with Automatic Dependent Surveillance- working. The 𝑢𝑛 with the highest pheromone is the critical
Broadcast (ADS-B). Thus, 𝑢𝑠𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑐𝑒 can achieve the directions factor for the next authentication of the joining UAS.
of broadcast for RREQ, 𝑉 (𝑠, 𝑑) . 𝑉(𝑠, 𝑑) is the vector from
⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖
⃗ ⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃗ The specific routing processing is shown as the pseu-
𝑢𝑠𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑐𝑒 to 𝑢𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 geographically. Based on 𝑉 docode of Algorithm 1.
(𝑠, 𝑑) , 𝑢𝑠𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑐𝑒
⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖
⃗
can select 𝑢𝑛 which fall in the direction of 𝑉 (𝑠, 𝑑) . In the space
⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖
⃗
3.3. Blockchain based Authentication
definition, we assume the searching space is 𝜋, which means Blockchain based authentication has shown its immense
the next 𝑢𝑛 fall in the space with the vector 𝑉 (𝑠, 𝑛) that directs
⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖
⃗
potential to improve the security and efficiency of authen-
tication. Compared with the conventional authentications,

Jian Wang et al.: Preprint submitted to Elsevier Page 6 of 13

 Lightweight Blockchain Assisted Secure Routing of Swarm UAS Networking

Algorithm 1 The Next Secure Hops Selection

1: procedure N EXT H OP S ELECTION (𝑈(𝑛, ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑠) )
2: 𝑢𝑛 ← 𝑅𝑅𝐸𝑄;
3: 𝑢𝑛 ← 𝑠𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑐𝑒_𝐼𝐷;
4: 𝑢𝑛 ← 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛_𝐼𝐷;
5: 𝑢𝑛 ← 𝑉 ⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃗
(𝑠, 𝑑) ;
6: 𝑢𝑛 ← 𝑈𝑛𝑒𝑖𝑔𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑠 ;
7: if 𝜃(𝑉⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃗,𝑉⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃖⃗) ≤ 𝜋 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑢𝑛+1 ∈ 𝐻𝑁 then
(𝑠, 𝑑) (𝑛, 𝑛+1)
8: 𝑈(𝑛, ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑠)←𝑢𝑛+1 ;
9: end if
10: 𝑅𝑅𝐸𝑄 → 𝑈(𝑛, ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑠) ;
11: 𝑢𝑛 ← 𝑙1 ;
𝜏
1
12: △𝑃 ℎ𝑛 ← △𝑃 ℎ𝑛 + ; Figure 4: Operation of Authentication for Swarm UAS Net-
𝑙𝜏
13: 𝑃 ℎ𝑛 ← (1 − 𝛼) × 𝑃 ℎ𝑛 + △𝑃 ℎ𝑛 ; working
14: end procedure

joining UAS, 𝑢𝑗𝑜𝑖𝑛 . After authentication of joining UAS, the

Joining UAS
Packet Delivery Message UAS Verification UAS
Figure 3: Consensus Construction for Joining Swarm UAS
Networking
Blockchain based approaches show more outstanding on the
immutability and the distribution. However, the require-
ments of computational resource and synchronized network-
ing for the performance of Blockchain decelerate the pro-
cessing of Blockchain deployment on the tiny and ubiqui-
tous embedded devices on a large scale. The challenge of
Blockchain deployment on a large scale derives from the
consensus construction and the synchronization of blocks.
In this section, we will propose a novel consensus
construction and synchronization to achieve lightweight
Blockchain which is compatible with the computation-
constrained and synchronization-limited networking, swarm
UAS networking. The lightweight Blockchain is also the
main support of secure routing for swarm UAS network-
ing. Due to the characteristics of UAS, swarm UAS net-
working can not afford the requirement of infinite compu-
tation resources and high synchronization. The lightweight
Blockchain is urgent to implement to improve the scalability
and the security of swarm UAS networking.
Blockchain will distribute the updated block digests to the
whole swarm UAS networking with the proposed synchro-
nization approach.
As illustrated in Figure 3, a new UAS, 𝑢𝑗𝑜𝑖𝑛 , is going
to join the swarm UAS networking. At beginning, 𝑢𝑗𝑜𝑖𝑛
sends joining networking request, 𝑅𝑄𝑗𝑜𝑖𝑛 , to the UAS (de-
noted as 𝑢𝑚𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑔𝑒 ) which is located in the edge of swarm
UAS. After receiving 𝑅𝑄𝑗𝑜𝑖𝑛 , 𝑢𝑚𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑔𝑒 broadcasts 𝑅𝑄𝑗𝑜𝑖𝑛 to
its own neighbors, 𝑈𝑛𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑠 , with Hashed TimeLock Con-
Judge UAS
tract (HTLC), 𝜔 and signature of 𝑢𝑚𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑔𝑒 . 𝑈𝑛𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑠 re-
turned its 𝑃 ℎ𝑛 within HTLC. We set HTLC at 0.01 sec-
onds for the jointing UAS to give a response. The 𝑢𝑛 , de-
noted 𝑢𝑗𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑒 , with the most 𝑃 ℎ𝑛 is selected by 𝑢𝑚𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑔𝑒 as
the authority to judge the joining event. 𝑢𝑚𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑔𝑒 sends con-
firmation of judge selection to 𝑢𝑗𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑒 . With signed of reply,
𝑢𝑗𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑒 sends the random selection authentication number, 𝜁 ,
to 𝑢𝑚𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑔𝑒 and request the random selection blocks speci-
fication 𝑅𝑄𝑎𝑢𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 of the verification UAS, 𝑢𝜁 , in the
swarm UAS. 𝑢𝜁 encrypts 𝐼𝜁 and timestamp, 𝑡𝜁 , with 𝑢𝑗𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑒 ’s
public key 𝑃𝑢𝑗𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑒 . With the routing from 𝑢𝑗𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑒 to 𝑢𝜁 , 𝑢𝜁 re-
turns the encrypted verification to 𝑢𝑗𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑒 . 𝑢𝑗𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑒 decrypts the
verification with its own secret key, 𝑆𝑢𝑗𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑒 . After receiving
𝜁 , 𝑢𝑚𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑔𝑒 relays the number to 𝑢𝑗𝑜𝑖𝑛 with request of block
digest, 𝐻𝜁 , of Blockchain. 𝑢𝑗𝑜𝑖𝑛 extracts 𝐻𝜁 and timestamp,
𝑡𝑗𝑜𝑖𝑛 and sends the packet to 𝑢𝑚𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑔𝑒 . After verifying the
timestamp within HTLC, 𝑢𝑚𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑔𝑒 attaches its own signa-
ture with the packet and transfers it to 𝑢𝑗𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑒 . The 𝑢𝑗𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑒
digests 𝐼𝜁 to 𝐻𝜁′ , and compare 𝐻𝜁 and 𝐻𝜁′ . If 𝐻𝜁 and 𝐻𝜁′
match, 𝑢𝑗𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑒 sends authentication confirmation to 𝑢𝑚𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑎𝑔𝑒
and 𝑢𝑗𝑜𝑖𝑛 . 𝑢𝑗𝑜𝑖𝑛 sends its own 𝐻𝑗𝑜𝑖𝑛 and to 𝑢𝑗𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑒 for broad-
cast. Each traffic through 𝑢𝑗𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑒 will be attached with 𝐻𝑗𝑜𝑖𝑛
for broadcast. each communication, 𝑢𝑛 checks 𝐻𝑁 and up-
dates 𝐻𝑁 ′ . The specific operation map is shown as Figure 4.

As mentioned in subsection 3.2, different from the con-

ventional Blockchain distributions, we consider each UAS For attackers to brute force the authentication, they need
as a block in Blockchain. Each UAS stores its own spe- to catch all the information of the Blockchain which is as-
cific identification, 𝐼𝑖 , and the block digest of the whole sumed not to leakage to attackers. The possibilities for at-
Blockchain, 𝐻𝑁 . Blockchain is extended based on the new tackers to get through authentication randomly for each at-

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 Lightweight Blockchain Assisted Secure Routing of Swarm UAS Networking

Table 1 Table 2
Maximum Attacking Probability For Each Encryption Type Parameters of Swarm UAS Configuration
𝜂𝜁 (bits) 64 128 256 512 Swarm Distribution Space 100 m * 100 m * 5 m
𝑃 𝑟𝑏𝑟𝑢𝑡𝑒𝐹 𝑜𝑟𝑐𝑒 1.8070𝑒−20 9.7958𝑒−40 2.8787𝑒−78 2.4861𝑒−155 Speed 10-15 𝑚∕𝑠
Transmission Range 15 m
Transmission Protocol UDP
tempt: Latency of Legitimated UAS 100 𝑢𝑠
1 Latency of Malicious UAS 300 𝑢𝑠
𝑃 𝑟𝑏𝑟𝑢𝑡𝑒𝐹 𝑜𝑟𝑐𝑒 = (7) Bandwidth 2 𝑀𝑏𝑝𝑠
𝑁 × 2 𝐻𝜁
Routing Algorithm AODV
The attackers need to guess the specific digest of Blockchain Evaluation Runs 10000
𝐻𝜁 which is hashed with 𝜂𝜁 bits. At the same time, within Each Evaluation Time 20 s
𝜔, the attackers need to obtain powerful computational re-
sources to find the digest of 𝐻𝜁 . The maximum probabilities
of attacking to Blockchain is shown as Table 1.
For the synchronization of Blockchain, we adopt a pas-
sive approach to broadcast the updated blocks with the com-
munication of the swarm UAS networking. The updated
blocks, 𝐻𝑛′ is stored in 𝑢𝑗𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑒 which has main traffic streams.
Each packet 𝑝𝜇 passes through 𝑢𝑗𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑒 will be attached to the
updated blocks to synchronize the its neighbors 𝑈𝑛𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑠 .
The updated 𝑢𝑛𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑠 will be marked in 𝑈𝑢𝑝𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 . The up-
dated UAS will check its neighbors 𝑈𝑛𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑠
′ and deliver the
updated 𝐻𝑛 when 𝑝𝜇 passes through. The specific process-
′

ing is shown as the pseudocode of Algorithm 2.

Algorithm 2 The Blockchain Synchronization

1: procedure B LOCKCHAIN SYNCHRONIZATION (𝐻𝑛′ )
Figure 5: Routing Processing
2: if 𝑈𝑢𝑝𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 = 𝑈𝑛𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑠 then
3: 𝐵𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑘;
4: end if
the hops selection, we adopt the Ad-hoc On-demand Dis-
5: 𝑢 𝑛 ← 𝑝𝜇 ;
tance Vector (AODV) to generate routing for swarm UAS
6: 𝑢𝑛𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑠 = 𝑈(𝑛, ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑠) ;
which has promising potentials in the deployment on a large
7: 𝑢 𝑛 → 𝑝𝜇 ;
scale. The latency caused by the system of each legitimated
8: 𝑢𝑛𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑠 ← 𝑝𝜇 ;
UAS is configured as 100 𝑢𝑠, and the malicious one is con-
9: 𝑢𝑛𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑠 → 𝐻𝑛 ;
figured as 300 𝑢𝑠 respectively. To achieve the dynamics of
10: 𝑢𝑛 ← 𝐻𝑛 ;
the performance, the decay parameter also can be set accord-
11: if 𝐻𝑛′ ≠ 𝐻𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑢𝑛𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑠 ∉ 𝑈𝑢𝑝𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 then
ing to the traffic status which means that the decay parameter
12: 𝑢𝑛𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑠 ← 𝐻𝑛′ ;
has a negative relationship with the traffic status. However,
13: 𝑈𝑢𝑝𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 ← 𝑢𝑛𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑠 ;
the decay parameter optimization is not our research focus,
14: end if
we just chose 0.5 to achieve the balanced performance ca-
15: end procedure
pacities. Corresponding to the HTLC, we chose SHA 256
as encryption method. The whole evaluation is executed for
10000 runs and each run costs 20 seconds averagely.
4. Evaluation Figure 5 shows the processing of routing generation.
With lightweight Blockchain, the malicious UAS is marked
In this section, the evaluation is conducted with Mat- in a red filled circle. The legitimated UAS is marked in a
lab 2019b and the configuration of hardware is as follows. cyan filled circle. The purple filled circle is source UAS
CPU: E5-1607 v4 @ 3.10GHz × 4; Memory: 15.6 GiB; OS: and the blue one is destination respectively. The source
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. sends RREQ to its neighbors to find the destination which
The specific configuration of evaluation is illustrated as is marked in the blue line. Once the destination received the
Table 2. In the configuration, the speed of each UAS ranges RREQ and it feedbacks RREP with the hops of routing to
from 10𝑚∕𝑠 to 15𝑚∕𝑠 which creates the randomness for the source. The generated routing is marked in the red line.
links between UASs locally. The swarm UAS is distributed Figure 6 shows the average latency of routing between
in the space of 100𝑚 ∗ 100𝑚 ∗ 5𝑚 relatively under ran- the blockchain-assisted algorithm and non Blockchain-
dom walk model for randomness. The maximum transmis- assisted algorithm. Generally, the latency of non Blockchain-
sion range in the swarm is limited to 15𝑚. Compatible with

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 Lightweight Blockchain Assisted Secure Routing of Swarm UAS Networking

98
Blockchain-assisted
non Blockchain-assisted

96
Average Latency of Routing (ms)

94

92

90

88

86
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
Proportion of Malicious UAS(%)

Figure 6: Average Latency of Routing Figure 8: Distribution of Traffic of Swarm UAS Networking

0.5 0.34

0.45 Blockchain-assisted
0.32
non Blockchain-assisted
Average Malicious Involving Rate of Routing

0.4 0.3

Average Maximum Pheromone

0.35
0.28
0.3
0.26
0.25
0.24
0.2
0.22
0.15
0.2
0.1
0.18
0.05

0.16
0 0 20 40 60 80 100
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
Broadcast Hops
Proportion of Malicious UAS(%)

Figure 7: Average Malicious Involving Rate of Routing Figure 9: Average Maximum Broadcast Pheromone

assisted algorithms is overwhelming than the blockchain- ors and sizes in Figure 8. We also observed that the UASs
assisted algorithm. With the increase of the proportion of with high traffic status concentrates on the central zones of
malicious UASs in swarm UAS networking, the ratio of be- swarm UAS.
ing selected as relay nodes is increasing which causes the Figure 9 illustrates the average pheromone for consensus
non blockchain-assisted algorithm to cost more latency than construct. In HTLC processing, we simplify the HTLC into
the blockchain-assisted algorithms. hops generated by each 𝑅𝑄𝑗𝑜𝑖𝑛 , we collected the maximum
Figure 7 shows the involving rate of malicious UASs in pheromones in the limited HTLC. With 𝑅𝑄𝑗𝑜𝑖𝑛 broadcast
swarm UAS networking. We compared the performance be- in the swarm UAS networking, we can observe the maxi-
tween Blockchain-assisted and non Blockchain-assisted ap- mum of pheromone keep steady once the hops exceed 10.
proaches. As the proportion of malicious UASs in swarm The maximum of pheromone used for consensus construc-
UAS networking increases, the ratio of the selection of ma- tion keeps 0.3308 as the hops increase.
licious UASs in routing expands. With identification stored Figure 10 exhibits the comparison between PoW, PoS
in Blockchain, the lightweight Blockchain-assisted approach and our proposed consensus construction (PoT). Based on
can keep the malicious UASs participating in the routing of the scalability of PoS, we choose 20%, 30%, 40% of PoS
swarm UAS networking. as the comparison. Figure 10, shows as the amounts of
Figure 8 presents the traffic distribution of swarm UAS swarm UASs increase, the routing for consensus construc-
networking. The traffic status is updated according to the tion surges. Compared with 20%, 30%, 40% of PoS, PoT
pheromone generated with each communication. Each suc- keeps lower routings consumption as the amounts of swarm
cessful communication mark the links in the swarm UAS UAS rises which means the overhead of PoT is much lower
networking and the UAS will count the pheromone it owns than PoW and PoS. The outstanding routing consumption
which can be requested by other validated UASs in swarm shows the feasibility of implementation in the resource con-
UAS networking. We marked each UAS with different col- straint platforms.
Figure 11 shows the routing consumption in the blocks

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 Lightweight Blockchain Assisted Secure Routing of Swarm UAS Networking

10000
the swarm UAS networking constructs consensus with PoT.
Proof-of-Work
To save routing construction, PoT synchronizes the updated
9000
20% of Proof-of-Stake
30% of Proof-of-Stake
blocks with the passive broadcast. The evaluation shows
PoT can reduce the routing consumption in the processes of
8000
Routings for Consensus Construction

40% of Proof-of-Stake
Proof-of-Traffic
7000
consensus construction and blocks synchronization. Com-
6000
patible with the constrained resource of swarm UASs, the
5000 lightweight Blockchain-assisted approach proposed in this
4000 paper can maintain the efficiency of swarm UAS network-
3000 ing.
2000
In the future, we will continue to explore the potential
1000
of efficiency of passive synchronization, and optimize the
HTLC to enhance the consensus construction processing.
0
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 The passive synchronization shows significant potential to
Amount of Swarm UAS
improve the efficiency of lightweight Blockchain implemen-
Figure 10: Routings for Consensus Construction tation in the resource constraint devices. The optimized se-
lection of HTLC based on machine learning may stimulate
the passive synchronization more robust and smart that can
100 enhance the secure defense of swarm UASs in the joining
90
Proof-of-Work processing and leaving processing.
20% of Proof-of-Stake
30% of Proof-of-Stake
80 40% of Proof-of-Stake
Routings for Blocks Synchronization

Proof-of-Traffic
70 6. Acknowledgement
60 This material is based upon work supported by the Na-
50 tional Science Foundation under Grant No. 1956193 and
40 Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Faculty Innovative
30
Research in Science and Technology (FIRST) Program.
20

10
0 [1] Alghamdi, T.A., Ali, I., Javaid, N., Shafiq, M., 2020. Secure service
10
Figure 11: Routings for Synchronization
synchronization. For PoW and PoS, the lead needs to gen-
erated additional routings to broadcast the blocks for syn-
chronization which will cost much overhead in the swarm
UASs. PoT leverages the passive broadcast to synchronize
the blocks which do not need to generate additional routings
for broadcast.
The evaluation shows that our proposed lightweight
Blockchain approach can reduce the consumption of over-
head and increase the security of swarm UAS networking.
In the evaluation, we compared PoW, PoS, and PoT, and the
results show that PoT can achieve outstanding performance
than PoW and PoS in the resource constraint platform.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, we leverage lightweight Blockchain to as-
sist the swarm UASs to improve the security of routing
with constraint computation resources. With lightweight
Blockchain, swarm UASs can prevent the malicious UAS
connection to the swarm UAS networking and mitigate the
attacks from malicious UASs. Different from PoW and PoS,
we leverage pheromone to mark the traffic status of each
UAS in swarm UAS networking. Based on the traffic status,
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Jian Wang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Depart-
ment of Electrical Engineering and Computer
Science, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
(ERAU), Daytona Beach, Florida, and a graduate
research assistant in the Security and Optimiza-
tion for Networked Globe Laboratory (SONG Lab,
www.SONGLab.us). He received his M.S. from
South China Agricultural University in 2017 and
B.S. from Nanyang Normal University in 2014.
His major research interests include wireless net-
works, unmanned aircraft systems, and machine
learning.
Yongxin Liu received his B.S. and M.S. from
SCAU in 2011 and 2014, respectively, and he re-
ceived Ph.D. from the School of Civil Engineer-
ing and Transportation, South China University
of Technology. His major research interests in-
clude data mining, wireless networks, the Internet
of Things, and unmanned aerial vehicles.
Shuteng Niu is a Ph.D. candidate in the De-
partment of Electrical Engineering and Computer
Science, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
(ERAU), Daytona Beach, Florida, and a graduate
Jian Wang et al.: Preprint submitted to Elsevier
research assistant in the Security and Optimiza-
tion for Networked Globe Laboratory (SONG Lab,
www.SONGLab.us). He received his M.S. from
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) in
2018 and B.S. from Civil Aviation University of
China (CAUC) in 2015. His major research in-
terests include machine learning, data mining, and
signal processing.
Houbing Song received the Ph.D. degree in elec-
trical engineering from the University of Virginia,
Charlottesville, VA, in August 2012, and the M.S.
degree in civil engineering from the University of
Texas, El Paso, TX, in December 2006.
In August 2017, he joined the Department
of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona
Beach, FL, where he is currently an Assistant Pro-
fessor and the Director of the Security and Opti-
mization for Networked Globe Laboratory (SONG
Lab, www.SONGLab.us). He served on the faculty
of West Virginia University from August 2012 to
August 2017. In 2007 he was an Engineering Re-
search Associate with the Texas A&M Transporta-
tion Institute. He has served as an Associate Tech-
nical Editor for IEEE Communications Magazine
(2017-present), an Associate Editor for IEEE In-
ternet of Things Journal (2020-present) and IEEE
Journal on Miniaturization for Air and Space Sys-
tems (J-MASS) (2020-present), and a Guest Edi-
tor for IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Commu-
nications (J-SAC), IEEE Internet of Things Jour-
nal, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics,
IEEE Sensors Journal, IEEE Transactions on In-
telligent Transportation Systems, and IEEE Net-
work. He is the editor of six books, including Big
Data Analytics for Cyber-Physical Systems: Ma-
chine Learning for the Internet of Things, Elsevier,
2019, Smart Cities: Foundations, Principles and
Applications, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2017, Secu-
rity and Privacy in Cyber-Physical Systems: Foun-
dations, Principles and Applications, Chichester,
UK: Wiley-IEEE Press, 2017, Cyber-Physical Sys-
tems: Foundations, Principles and Applications,
Boston, MA: Academic Press, 2016, and Industrial
Internet of Things: Cybermanufacturing Systems,
Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2016. He is the au-
thor of more than 100 articles. His research inter-
ests include cyber-physical systems, cybersecurity
and privacy, internet of things, edge computing,
AI/machine learning, big data analytics, unmanned
aircraft systems, connected vehicle, smart and con-
nected health, and wireless communications and
networking. His research has been featured by pop-
ular news media outlets, including IEEE Global-
Spec’s Engineering360, USA Today, U.S. News
& World Report, Fox News, Association for Un-
manned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI),
Forbes, WFTV, and New Atlas.
Dr. Song is a senior member of ACM. Dr.
Song was a recipient of the Best Paper Award from
the 12th IEEE International Conference on Cyber,
Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom-2019),
the Best Paper Award from the 2nd IEEE Inter-
national Conference on Industrial Internet (ICII
2019), the Best Paper Award from the 19th In-
tegrated Communication, Navigation and Surveil-
lance technologies (ICNS 2019) Conference, the
Page 12 of 13
 Lightweight Blockchain Assisted Secure Routing of Swarm UAS Networking

prestigious Air Force Research Laboratory’s In-

formation Directorate (AFRL/RI) Visiting Faculty
Research Fellowship in 2018, and the very first
recipient of the Golden Bear Scholar Award, the
highest campus-wide recognition for research ex-
cellence at West Virginia University Institute of
Technology (WVU Tech), in 2016.

Jian Wang et al.: Preprint submitted to Elsevier Page 13 of 13