Development of UAV Swarm Ad-Hoc Network Communication Technology for Emergency Scenarios: A Review

Abstract

Major disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and wildfires can rapidly destroy terrestrial communication infrastructure, producing an extreme operating environment in which power, road, and network outages compound one another. Owing to their rapid deployability, flexible networking, and three-dimensional mobility, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms are being studied as a flexible component of emergency communication systems. This paper reviews UAV swarm ad-hoc network communication technology for emergency scenarios. It examines the technical characteristics and applicability boundaries of three network architectures---flat, hierarchical clustering, and space-air-ground integrated---and surveys recent advances in routing and medium access, intelligent networking optimization, and transmission and security assurance. Particular attention is given to the reported performance and applicability of emerging approaches, including reinforcement-learning-based adaptive routing, decentralized federated learning, digital twins, and semantic communication, under highly dynamic and resource-constrained conditions. Drawing on studies of emergency routing, post-disaster data collection, semantic forwarding, and multi-layer coverage, the paper assesses current validation methods and outlines research directions in energy use, scalability, security, resilience, and standardization. Its contribution is a cross-layer comparison that relates architecture choices to protocol requirements, implementation costs, and validation maturity.