  With the development in information and communications technology (ICT) and
drones such as Internet-of-Things (IoT), edge computing, image processing, and
autonomous drones, solutions supporting search and rescue (SAR) missions can be
developed with more intelligent capabilities. In most of the drone and unmanned
aerial vehicle (UAV) based systems supporting SAR missions, several drones
deployed in different areas acquire images and videos that are sent to a ground
control station (GCS) for processing and detecting a missing person. Although
this offers many advantages, such as easy management and deployment, the
approach still has many limitations. For example, when a connection between a
drone and a GCS has some problems, the quality of service cannot be maintained.
Many drone and UAV-based systems do not support flexibility, transparency,
security, and traceability. In this paper, we propose a novel
Internet-of-Drones (IoD) architecture using blockchain technology. We implement
the proposed architecture with different drones, edge servers, and a
Hyperledger blockchain network. The proof-of-concept design demonstrates that
the proposed architecture can offer high-level services such as prolonging the
operating time of a drone, improving the capability of detecting humans
accurately, and a high level of transparency, traceability, and security.
