Securing Collaborative Environment Monitoring in Smart Cities Using Blockchain Enabled Software-Defined Internet of Drones

The Internet of Drones (IoD) is a layered network control architecture, which is having a revolutionary impact on the monitoring and preservationvof the environment. Large-scale drone-assisted environmental monitoring can provide a better perspective and high-quality data by monitoring the operation of critical components of smart cities. However, with the continuous expansion of IoD scale and the increase of multi-drone collaboration tasks, the large-scale drone-assisted service in smart cities monitoring will inevitably encounter the problem of relay and transfer of drone control. Lack of a trust collaboration paradigm between drone controllers will bring huge security challenges to real-time monitoring the environment, collaboration of tasks, data, location privacy of drones, and so on. To address this important issue in IoD, this article proposes a paradigm that uses smart contracts and blockchain to ensure trusted collaboration between controllers of software defined IoD (SD-IoD). First, we propose a novel SD-IoD architecture to enhance the support for heterogeneity and flexibility of IoD for monitoring of the environment. Second, we propose a controller consortium blockchain for secure and efficient cooperation and interoperability of drone controllers, which includes a new cryptographic currency cooperation coin and a new consensus mechanism proof of security guarantee (PoSG). Third, we have designed a novel incentive mechanism to encourage controllers to maintain their security and provide safer services to other controllers. The security analysis and performance simulation results indicate the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism.