Addressing the Return Visit Challenge in Autonomous Flying Ad Hoc Networks Linked to a Central Station

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have become essential tools across various sectors due to their versatility and advanced capabilities in autonomy, perception, and networking. Despite over a decade of experimental efforts in multi-UAV systems, substantial theoretical challenges concerning coordination mechanisms still need to be solved, particularly in maintaining network connectivity and optimizing routing. Current research has revealed the absence of an efficient algorithm tailored for the routing problem of multiple UAVs connected to a central station, especially under the constraints of maintaining constant network connectivity and minimizing the average goal revisit time. This paper proposes a heuristic routing algorithm for multiple UAV systems to address the return visit challenge in flying ad hoc networks (FANETs) linked to a central station. Our approach introduces a composite valuation function for target prioritization and a mathematical model for task assignment with relay allocation, allowing any UAV to visit various objectives and gain an advantage or incur a cost for each. We exclusively utilized a simulation environment to mimic UAV operations, assessing communication range, connectivity, and routing performance. Extensive simulations demonstrate that our routing algorithm remains efficient in the face of frequent topological alterations in the network, showing robustness against dynamic environments and superior performance compared to existing methods. This paper presents different approaches to efficiently directing UAVs and explains how heuristic algorithms can enhance our understanding and improve current methods for task assignments.