Cooperation without compromise: Securing UAV collaboration in the low-altitude economy
Abstract
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have demonstrated remarkable versatility across industries and are poised to drive low-altitude economy (LAE), where effective cooperation is key to unlocking their full potential. Given the open and interconnected nature of LAE networks, UAV cooperation introduces privacy risks that may undermine trust and collaboration. Protecting sensitive information, such as locations, flight trajectories, and proprietary operational data, is essential to ensure secure and reliable coordination. The disclosure of this information could expose a UAV to attacks or disruptions. This article presents a novel privacy-preserving UAV cooperation framework designed to create a privacy-conscious networking environment and promote collaborative UAV operations for LAE. The framework specifically addresses privacy concerns inherent in collaborative UAV missions by safeguarding origin points, destinations, and trajectories. This is achieved through destination obfuscation and a non-cooperative Bayesian game approach for trajectory planning, wherein each UAV only shares the probabilistic distribution of its potential waypoints at different times. The best response strategy is established to guarantee a Nash equilibrium regarding the trajectories. Simulations demonstrate the framework’s capability to ensure timely UAV arrivals, while preserving trajectory and location privacy. Even under moderate obfuscation the algorithm maintains over 90% of the optimal energy performance, highlighting its resilience to privacy-preserving perturbations.
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of Publication
1-1-2025
Publication Title
IEEE Wireless Communications
Publisher
IEEE
School
School of Engineering
Copyright
subscription content
Comments
Liu, B., Ni, W., Liu, R. P., & Zhu, H. (2025). Cooperation without compromise: Securing UAV collaboration in the low-altitude economy. IEEE Wireless Communications. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1109/MWC.2025.3631773