On Using Blockchains for Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) Drones Operation: An Architectural Study
Tahina Ralitera, Önder Gürcan · 2022
Beyond Visual Line of Sight operation enables drones to surpass the limits imposed by the reach and constraints of the eyes of their operator. It extends their range and, as such, productivity and profitability. Drones operating BVLOS include a variety of highly sensitive assets and information that could be subject to unintentional or intentional security vulnerabilities. As a solution, blockchain-based services could enable secure and trustworthy exchange and storage of related data. They also allow for traceability of exchanges and synchronization with other nodes in the network. In this context, we develop simulation models to evaluate different blockchain-based solutions before implementing them in real systems. However, most of these blockchain-based approaches focus on the network and the protocol aspects of drone systems. Few studies focus on the architectural level of on-chip compute platforms of drones. Based on this observation, the contribution of this paper is twofold : (1) a generic blockchain-based service architecture for on-chip compute platforms of drones in a simulated environment, and (2) an illustration of the proposed generic architecture in a simulated environment for authentication.