The operations of small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are expected to increase dramatically in the near future in metropolitan areas to replace labor intensive tasks such as package delivery, terrain surveying, etc. However, the obstacles in the urban environment (for e.g., skyscrapers) make the operation of detect-and-avoid system difficult by blocking the line of vision and data transmission signals. In this paper, we propose a UAV Traffic Information Exchange Network (UAV-TIEN) system to transmit traffic data in an efficient and secure fashion. UAV-TIEN adopts a blockchain-inspired data transmission mechanism to ensure data transmission security and create a flight data transmission network, which is robust against blocking line-of-sight. We describe the UAV-TIEN framework in detail and conduct Monte Carlo simulations to characterize performance of the system in a highly dynamic traffic environment. The results show that UAV-TIEN can increase the traffic data broadcasting range and reduce fraction of missing UAVs in a city.
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