A survey on recent optimal techniques for securing unmanned aerial vehicles applications

Abstract Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or Drones technology has a huge potential for supporting different efficient solutions for the smart applications in our world. The applications include smart things, smart transportation, smart cities, smart healthcare, smart personal care, smart house, smart industries, and so on. Due to the sensitive applications of UAVs, the security has become a major concern, and therefore, efficient techniques are required to protect captured data from hackers and the fictitious activities from illegitimate users. Machine learning (ML) techniques play a vital role in improving UAVs' security intelligently, while blockchain is recent technology for decentralized UAVs and security. Furthermore, watermarking guarantees digital media to be authenticated, protected, and copyright. Therefore, we provide a comprehensive survey of optimal techniques, which are used for securing UAVs applications in terms of blockchain, ML, and watermarking. Furthermore, we introduce each technique with the advantages and suitably used for securing UAVs collaboration applications. This survey contributes to a better understanding of the blockchain, ML, and watermarking techniques for securing UAVs and sheds new light on challenges and opportunities on subject applications.