# Wireless Local Area Network Link Sharing in Unmanned Surface Vehicle Control Scenarios

## TL;DR

This paper explores using wireless networks to handle both control and data communication for unmanned surface vehicles, ensuring reliable performance.

## Contribution

A novel method for sharing WLAN links for control and payload communication in USVs using COTS hardware.

## Key findings

- Payload traffic significantly impacts control communication quality when sharing a WLAN link.
- A COTS-based method enables reliable link sharing in real-world conditions.
- Laboratory and field tests confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed solution.

## Abstract

The popularity of unmanned vehicles in numerous areas of employment, combined with the diversity and continuing evolution of their payloads, make the communication solutions utilized by such vehicles the element of a particular importance. In our previous publication, we confirmed a general applicability of wireless local area network (WLAN) technologies as solutions suitable to provide a control loop communication of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs). At the same time, our research indicated that WLAN technologies provide communication resources in excess of what is required for the above task. In this paper, we aim to verify if a WLAN-based USV communication solution can be reliably utilized for both time-sensitive control loop and high-throughput payload communication simultaneously, which could provide significant advantages during USV construction and operation. For this purpose, we analyzed traffic parameters of popular USV payloads, designed a test system to monitor the impact of such traffic sharing a WLAN link with a USV control loop communication and conducted laboratory and field experiments. As initial results indicated the significant impact of payload traffic on the quality of control communication, we have also proposed a method of employing Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) hardware for this purpose, in a manner which allows the above-mentioned link sharing to operate reliably in changing real-world conditions. The subsequent verification, first in the laboratory and then during a real-world USV field deployment, confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed method.