A Dyna-Q-Based Solution for UAV Networks Against Smart Jamming Attacks

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) networks have a wide range of applications, such as in the Internet of Things (IoT), 5G communications, and so forth. However, the communications between UAVs and UAVs to ground control stations mainly use radio channels, and therefore these communications are vulnerable to cyberattacks. With the advent of software-defined radio (SDR), smart attacks that can flexibly select attack strategies according to the defender’s state information are gradually attracting the attention of researchers and potential attackers of UAV networks. The smart attack can even induce the defender to take a specific defense strategy, causing even greater damage. Inspired by symmetrical thinking, a solution using a software-defined network (SDN) to combat software-defined radio was proposed. We propose a network architecture which uses dual controllers, including a UAV flight controller and SDN controller, to achieve collaborative decision-making. Built on the top of the SDN, the state information of the whole network converges quickly and is fitted to an environment model used to develop an improved Dyna-Q-based reinforcement learning algorithm. The improved algorithm integrates the power allocation and track planning of UAVs into a unified action space. The simulation data showed that the proposed communication solution can effectively avoid smart jamming attacks and has faster learning efficiency and higher convergence performance than the compared algorithms.