TrustUP: A Trust Evaluation Scheme in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Networks for Power Line Inspections

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are crucial for inspecting power line. However, UAVs are susceptible to malicious hacking, which can result in the dissemination of false information and service disruptions. To secure data transmission, most current methods utilize Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) for data encryption and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to safeguard data. However, the trust of UAVs has not been fully considered. We propose a trust evaluation scheme specifically in UAV networks for power line inspections to enhance security. By evaluating overall trust and implementing a trust threshold, the scheme filters out malicious UAVs from the network. A series of experiments are conducted to evaluate the scheme's performance in detecting malicious UAVs. The results demonstrate that the trust evaluation scheme effectively increases the trust level within the UAV network, ensures the reliability of data during transmission and storage, and significantly improves the security of power line inspection tasks.