Prescribed‐Time Hierarchical Optimal Formation Control for UAVs Under DoS Attacks

ABSTRACT This article presents a hierarchical control strategy, which consists of a reference systems layer and a task execution layer, to solve the problem of prescribed‐time optimal formation control for fixed‐wing unmanned aerial vehicles subject to denial‐of‐service (DoS) attacks. First, the reference systems provide guidance trajectories for all unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Unlike existing resilient methods, the proposed methods are compatible with various types of DoS attacks, such as intermittent DoS attacks, aperiodic DoS attacks, and interrupted communication DoS attacks. Moreover, the proposed methods relax the assumption that the leader's system is particular. The second layer is control execution, where the optimal controller is designed by combining the backstepping technique with the reinforcement learning technique. Meanwhile, the tracking errors of followers converge to a specified small area near zone in a prescribed time, and the proposed approach guarantees convergence and optimal performance, even in external disturbances and input saturations. Finally, some examples illustrate the efficacy and advantages of the suggested algorithm.