A Novel Internet-of-Drones and Blockchain-based System Architecture for Search and Rescue

TL;DR

This paper introduces an innovative IoD and blockchain-based system architecture for search and rescue missions, enhancing security, transparency, and operational efficiency of drone networks.

Contribution

It presents a novel IoD architecture integrated with blockchain technology, improving drone operation time, detection accuracy, and system transparency compared to existing solutions.

Findings

Enhanced drone operating time and detection accuracy.

Blockchain integration provides security and traceability.

Proof-of-concept demonstrates practical viability.

Abstract

With the development in information and communications technology (ICT) and drones such as Internet-of-Things (IoT), edge computing, image processing, and autonomous drones, solutions supporting search and rescue (SAR) missions can be developed with more intelligent capabilities. In most of the drone and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) based systems supporting SAR missions, several drones deployed in different areas acquire images and videos that are sent to a ground control station (GCS) for processing and detecting a missing person. Although this offers many advantages, such as easy management and deployment, the approach still has many limitations. For example, when a connection between a drone and a GCS has some problems, the quality of service cannot be maintained. Many drone and UAV-based systems do not support flexibility, transparency, security, and traceability. In this paper, we propose a novel Internet-of-Drones (IoD) architecture using blockchain technology. We implement the proposed architecture with different drones, edge servers, and a Hyperledger blockchain network. The proof-of-concept design demonstrates that the proposed architecture can offer high-level services such as prolonging the operating time of a drone, improving the capability of detecting humans accurately, and a high level of transparency, traceability, and security.