A Review on Communication Protocols for Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Inspection Application

TL;DR

This paper reviews communication protocols and technologies for autonomous UAVs, focusing on multi-UAV coordination in power line inspection, analyzing performance, modeling, and middleware solutions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of wireless communication options, modeling, and middleware for UAV networks in inspection tasks, highlighting current technologies and their features.

Findings

Wireless technologies vary in performance and reliability.

UAV mesh networks enable effective multi-UAV communication.

ROS and ROS2 middleware are key for robotic communication.

Abstract

The communication system is a critical part of the system design for the autonomous UAV. It has to address different considerations, including efficiency, reliability and mobility of the UAV. In addition, a multi-UAV system requires a communication system to assist information sharing, task allocation and collaboration in a team of UAVs. In this paper, we review communication solutions for supporting a team of UAVs while considering an application in the power line inspection industry. We provide a review of candidate wireless communication technologies {for supporting communication in UAV applications. Performance measurements and UAV-related channel modeling of those candidate technologies are reviewed. A discussion of current technologies for building UAV mesh networks is presented. We then analyze the structure, interface and performance of robotic communication middleware, ROS and ROS2. Based on our review, the features and dependencies of candidate solutions in each layer of the communication system are presented.