AAR‐Raft: An Efficient and Secure Consensus Algorithm for UAV‐Swarm SAR Model

An improved Raft consensus algorithm called AAR‐Raft (auction and reputation‐replicated and fault tolerant) is proposed in this study to meet the dual requirements of timely synchronization and secure uplink of rescue information in UAV‐swarm rescue models. By introducing a reputation‐based evaluation mechanism and a leader authentication scheme, AAR‐Raft achieves an effective balance between security and efficiency in leader election. Additionally, a reputation‐driven reward‐and‐penalty strategy combined with joint authentication among leader nodes further lowers the long‐term risk posed by persistent Byzantine nodes. Meanwhile, a secret‐sharing scheme established on RSA encryption provides the necessary privacy protection for uploading rescue information. Compared with other consensus algorithms, AAR‐Raft achieves superior leader‐election efficiency while yielding significant reductions in consensus latency and notable improvements in overall system throughput. Furthermore, AAR‐Raft still maintains consistently low task‐completion latency under adversarial scenarios such as collusive and adaptive attacks, thus validating its robustness under complex network conditions.