Design of Ad Hoc Wireless Mesh Networks Formed by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles with Advanced Mechanical Automation

TL;DR

This paper explores the design and optimization of UAV-based ad hoc wireless mesh networks, focusing on advanced mechanical automation features like separable access points and replaceable batteries to improve deployment flexibility.

Contribution

It introduces new network architectures enabled by mechanized UAVs and proposes heuristic scheduling algorithms, benchmarking them against optimal solutions.

Findings

Heuristic algorithms perform close to optimal in various architectures.

Mechanized UAV features significantly enhance network deployment flexibility.

Optimized scheduling improves network reliability and coverage.

Abstract

Ad hoc wireless mesh networks formed by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with wireless transceivers (access points (APs)) are increasingly being touted as being able to provide a flexible "on-the-fly" communications infrastructure that can collect and transmit sensor data from sensors in remote, wilderness, or disaster-hit areas. Recent advances in the mechanical automation of UAVs have resulted in separable APs and replaceable batteries that can be carried by UAVs and placed at arbitrary locations in the field. These advanced mechanized UAV mesh networks pose interesting questions in terms of the design of the network architecture and the optimal UAV scheduling algorithms. This paper studies a range of network architectures that depend on the mechanized automation (AP separation and battery replacement) capabilities of UAVs and proposes heuristic UAV scheduling algorithms for each network architecture, which are benchmarked against optimal designs.