AoI Optimization in the UAV-Aided Traffic Monitoring Network Under Attack: A Stackelberg Game Viewpoint

Intelligent Vehicle Systems (IVSs) devote to integrating the data sensing, processing, and transmission in the Vehicle to Everything (V2X) scenarios, where the Unnamed Aircraft Vehicle (UAV)-aided traffic monitoring network is one of the most significant applications. Moreover, since the central premise to support the IVS is timely and effectively sensing data processing, Age of Information (AoI) can precisely reflect the timeliness and effectiveness of the communication process in the UAV-aided traffic monitoring network. However, recent researches pay little attention to AoI minimization issue, especially when the malicious attacker attempts to deteriorate the network performance. The accurately modelling of the adversarial relationship between legitimate UAVs and attacker is not fully investigated. To make up this research gap, we start from the Stackelberg game viewpoint to investigate the AoI optimization problem in the UAV-aided traffic monitoring network under attack. Firstly, the system model and three-layer Stackelberg game-based optimization goal are established. Secondly, based on the Backward Induction (BI) analysis, the follower’s data sensing rate, transmission power, and the leader’s attacking power are determined by the Lagrange duality optimization technology successively. Moreover, the sub-gradient update-based optimization technology is used to achieve the Stackelberg Equilibrium (SE). Finally, simulations are performed under various parameters. The evaluation results present better performance of our proposed approach when compared with the typical baselines.