Dynamic Deployment and Control of an NDN Network for Military Multi-UAVs Based Surveillance Applications

The military usage of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has garnered attention, especially after their employment in the Ukrainian war. Despite the most commented lethal usage, they have many other applications from which surveillance for imagery acquisition is one of primal importance. Using a standalone UAV for this purpose is well-known, but to cope with the scale of battlefield operations, using multi- UAV systems is an asset of great value. However, these systems rely on ad hoc networks that require solutions beyond conventional ones based on the Internet Protocol (IP). This paper addresses this concern by proposing a communication support mechanism for multi-UAV military surveillance systems based on the Information-Centric Networks (ICN) paradigm. The proposed approach consists of the dynamic deployment of an ICN network based on microservices architecture, where the communication services of each UAV are deployed according to their resources. The solution is validated in a simulated battlefield scenario where a surveillance UAV provides data demanded by other nodes. The results demonstrate that the proposed solution minimizes the data delivery delays by successfully deploying the customized set of microservices to support the transmission, even when a UAV with a low battery level is replaced at runtime.