Connectivity Stability in Autonomous Multi-level UAV Swarms for Wide Area Monitoring

Many different types of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been developed to address a variety of applications ranging from searching and mapping to surveillance. However, for complex wide-area surveillance scenarios, where fleets of autonomous UAVs must be deployed to work collectively on a common goal, multiple types of UAVs should be incorporated forming a heterogeneous UAV system. Indeed, the interconnection of two levels of UAVs—one with high altitude fixed-wing UAVs and one with low altitude rotarywing UAVs—can provide applicability for scenarios which cannot be addressed by either UAV type. This work considers a bi-level flying ad hoc networks (FANETs), in which each UAV is equipped with ad hoc communication capabilities, in which the higher level fixed-wing swarm serves mainly as a communication bridge for the lower level UAV fleets, which conduct precise information sensing. The interconnection of multiple UAV types poses a significant challenge, since each UAV l...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2015
• Where: MSWIM
• Authors: Grégoire Danoy, Matthias R. Brust, Pascal Bouvry
• Keywords: Modeling And Simulation, MSWIM 2015