An Energy-Efficient Event-Based MIMO Communication Scheme for UAV Formation Control

TL;DR

This paper introduces an energy-efficient event-based MIMO communication scheme for UAV formation control that adapts to channel and control states, reducing energy consumption and transmission frequency.

Contribution

It presents a novel event-triggered MIMO precoding method optimized via Lyapunov drift for UAV formation control, improving efficiency over traditional periodic schemes.

Findings

Reduced energy consumption compared to benchmark

Fewer transmissions required on average

Effective adaptation to channel and control states

Abstract

We consider a leader-follower formation control setup as an example for a multi-agent networked control system (NCS). This paper proposes an event-based wireless communication scheme with a MIMO precoder, that dynamically adapts to both the channel and the current control state. We apply a Lyapunov drift approach for optimizing the precoder and for defining an event-triggering policy. To evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme, we simulate a formation control of two unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) connected via a point-to-point MIMO fading channel. Compared to a benchmark scheme with periodic transmissions and a basic water-filling algorithm, we demonstrate that our proposed event-based scheme is more efficient by consuming less energy and requiring less frequent transmissions on average.