Multi-UAVs-based SDN, IoT, and Cloud Architecture for Hostile Areas Supervision

Abstract

During this last decade, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are being useful in complex missions and critical scenarios in particular for hostile areas supervision. The integration between Space-Air-Ground Networks (SAGIN) is gaining more attention especially with the future generation of cellular networks (6G). In this context, mainly, we focus on the integration between aerial and terrestrial networks. The aerial network corresponds to the use of the multi-UAVs network, called Flying Ad Hoc Networks (FANETs), and the terrestrial networks correspond to the use of the Ground Control Station (GCS), Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), Internet of Things (IoT), cellular networks and cloud computing. Moreover, we propose a novel architecture named Multi-UAVs-based SDN, IoT, and Cloud Architecture (MUSICA), in which we use Software Defined Network (SDN) controller to manage the integration between terrestrial and aerial networks and we deploy cloud storage and computing resources. The detailed functional components of the proposed MUSICA architecture and the data flow between its different components are discussed and the benefits of MUSICA for scalable land supervision are pinpointed.