An Intelligent DRL‐Based Framework for Reliable UAV Swarm Communications in Dynamic Environments

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) networks are increasingly deployed in dynamic environments where reliable and low‐latency communication is critical. However, high mobility, intermittent connectivity, spectrum limitations, and energy constraints make conventional static communication protocols inadequate for maintaining stable, dependable links. To address these challenges, this paper proposes TRC‐MAPPO, a topology‐aware reliability‐constrained multi‐agent deep reinforcement learning framework for adaptive UAV swarm communication. The routing problem is formulated as a constrained decision‐making task that jointly considers packet delivery reliability, end‐to‐end delay, link stability, bandwidth usage, and energy consumption. Unlike single‐agent DRL baselines, TRC‐MAPPO represents the swarm as a dynamic communication graph and combines local relay selection with centralized training, enabling cooperative routing decisions under time‐varying network conditions. Simulations are conducted in a controlled, dynamic UAV environment, with the same mobility and traffic settings used for all methods. The proposed framework is compared with DQN and PPO over different swarm densities. Results show that TRC‐MAPPO achieves a higher packet delivery ratio, lower end‐to‐end delay, and more efficient energy behaviour, particularly in dense deployments. These findings indicate that topology‐aware cooperative learning can provide a scalable and practical solution for reliable UAV communication in future intelligent aerial and 6G‐enabled networks.