Blockchain and Digital Twin-Integrated Multi-Tier UAV Network for 6G

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) will play a vital role in the operation, management and service provisioning process of Next-Generation Networks (NGNs). Given that the Sixth Generation (6G) network is an AI-native cooperative ecosystem that relies on the resource and intelligent capabilities of every layer of the network, especially edge devices, UAVs are thus critical and a key player in 6G. This paper presents a UAVsupported framework for 6G that relies on a multi-tiered approach to guarantee autonomous and optimal network coverage and bandwidth. The UAV network adapts Federated Learning (FL) to maintain self-organization and support for real-time edge processing. The multi-tiered UAV network approach uses realtime adjustments in swarm membership and task allocation to enhance the network energy consumption. Blockchain is integrated into each swarm to maintain the integrity of the trained models, and provides a decentralized device authentication and swarm coordination mechanism. System evaluations reveal that the proposed framework provides high levels of task completion ratio and learning accuracy.