Dependability of UAV-Based Networks and Computing Systems: A Survey

Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle (UAV) computing and networking are becoming a fundamental computation infrastructure for diverse cyber-physical application systems. UAVs can be empowered by AI on edge devices and can communicate with other UAVs and ground stations via wireless communication networks. Dynamic computation demands and heterogeneous computing resources are distributed in the system and need to be controlled to maintain the quality of services and to accomplish critical missions. With the evolution of UAV-based systems, dependability assurance of such systems emerges as a crucial challenge. UAV-based systems confront diverse sources of uncertainty that may threaten their dependability, such as software bugs, component failures, network disconnections, battery shortages, and disturbances from the real world. In this paper, we conduct systematic literature reviews on the dependability of UAV-based networks and computing systems. The survey report reveals emerging research trends in this field and summarizes the literature into comprehensive categories by threat types and adopted technologies. Based on our literature reviews, we identify eight research fields that require further exploration in the future to achieve dependable UAV-based systems.