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Acta Aeronautica et Astronautica Sinica ›› 2025, Vol. 46 ›› Issue (23): 632022.doi: 10.7527/S1000-6893.2025.32022

• special column • Previous Articles    

Interference management for UAV swarms: Fundamental mechanisms, techniques, and challenges

Liangjin ZHAO1,2, Haonan TONG1,2(), Ziyang YUAN1,2, Yundu LI1,2,3,4, Xiaodian ZHANG1,2, Peirui CHENG1,2   

  1. 1.Aerospace Information Research Institute,Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing 100094,China
    2.National Key Laboratory of Target Cognition and Application Technology (TCAT),Beijing 100190,China
    3.University of Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing 100190,China
    4.School of Electronic,Electrical and Communication Engineering,University of Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing 100190,China
  • Received:2025-03-25 Revised:2025-04-21 Accepted:2025-06-21 Online:2025-07-16 Published:2025-07-15
  • Contact: Haonan TONG E-mail:hntong@ieee.org
  • Supported by:
    National Natural Science Foundation of China(62331027)

Abstract:

With the rapid integration of low-altitude economy into national strategic emerging industries development plans, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) swarms, leveraging the advantages of distributed collaboration, have emerged as a pivotal technological paradigm to overcome the sensing limitations and computational bottlenecks of single-UAV systems. Operating in autonomous or semi-autonomous modes, UAV swarms achieve enhanced mission performance through dynamic networking, data sharing, and task coordination. These advancements have unlocked unprecedented efficiency in applications such as large-scale remote sensing monitoring, urban logistics delivery, and disaster-induced 3D reconstruction, surpassing the operational limits of individual UAV systems. However, with the large-scale deployment of UAVs, the interference effects faced by UAV swarms have become increasingly complex. These include not only the expansion of electromagnetic interference due to spectrum overlap and dense communication links, but also the spatiotemporal inconsistency of heterogeneous sensing data caused by sensor diversity and transmission latency, as well as the reduced adaptability of UAV swarms to dynamic environments influenced by weather and terrain variations. These interference factors interact and accumulate across the communication, sensing, and control functions of UAVs, forming complex interference effects that undermine the robustness of UAV swarm task execution and hinder their application in high-reliability scenarios. Robustness requirements for UAV clusters under complex interference, we systematically analyze interference from communication, sensing, and environmental factors, and proposes targeted interference management mechanisms across the communication, sensing, and control layers of UAV swarms. We consolidate a technology framework encompassing both individual UAV and swarm-level collaborative anti-interference strategies, critically evaluate the state-of-the-art approaches, and identify their limitations. Furthermore, we highlight unresolved challenges and propose future research directions, to provide theoretical foundations and technical guidelines for building highly reliable UAV swarm systems.

Key words: UAV swarm, interference management, multi-source data fusion, integration of communication, navigation and remote sensing, UAV collaboration

CLC Number: