Abstract
Collaboration between multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to set up a Flying Ad Hoc Network (FANET) is a growing trend since future applications claim for more autonomous and rapid deployable systems. The user experience on watching videos transmitted over FANETs should always be satisfactory even under influence of topology changes caused by the energy consumption of UAVs. In addition, the FANET must keep the UAVs cooperating as much as possible during a mission. However, one of the main challenges in FANET is how to mitigate the impact of limited energy resources of UAVs on the FANET operation in order to monitor the environment for a long period of time. In this sense, UAV replacement is required in order to avoid the premature death of nodes, network disconnections, route failures, void areas, and low-quality video transmissions. In addition, decision-making must take into account energy consumption associated with UAV movements, since they are generally quite energy-intensive. This article proposes a cooperative UAV scheme for enhancing video transmission and global energy efficiency called VOEI. The main goal of VOEI is to maintain the video with QoE support while supporting the nodes with a good connectivity quality level and flying for a long period of time. Based on an Software Defined Network (SDN) paradigm, the VOEI assumes the existence of a centrailized controller node to compute reliable and energy-efficiency routes, as well as detects the appropriate moment for UAV replacement by considering global FANET context information to provide energy-efficiency operations. Based on simulation results, we conclude that VOEI can effectively mitigate the energy challenges of FANET, since it provides energy-efficiency operations, avoiding network death, route failure, and void area, as well as network partitioning compared to state-of-the-art algorithm. In addition, VOEI delivers videos with suitable Quality of Experience (QoE) to end-users at any time, which is not achieved by the state-of-the-art algorithm.
Highlights
Flying ad hoc networks (FANETs) [1] are composed of a group of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), which are autonomous aircrafts without the need of a pilot to be on board during the flight [2].Compared to a single UAV system, a Flying Ad Hoc Network (FANET) is more robust and can cover a larger area of interest [3,4].Sensors 2018, 18, 4155; doi:10.3390/s18124155 www.mdpi.com/journal/sensorsIn this context, FANETs have been employed in many kinds of new smart city scenarios, such as disaster recovery, environmental monitoring, cooperative safety and security, and others
Simulation results demonstrate the efficiency of the VOEI in disseminating videos with high energy-efficiency, while achieving Quality of Experience (QoE) support in a video-aware FANET scenario
The simulation finished with almost of all UAVs by considering VOEI for UAVs flying with speeds ranging from 1 to 5 m/s
Summary
In this context, FANETs have been employed in many kinds of new smart city scenarios, such as disaster recovery, environmental monitoring, cooperative safety and security, and others. Support to deliver the content with a minimal quality level based on the user perspective [6] This is because users expect to receive live videos without ghosting, blocking, pixelization, freeze frame in order to enable the rescue team in the control center to take action to explore a hazardous area based on rich video information [7]. In this way, there is a demand for video with low frame loss rate, tolerable end-to-end delay, and low jitter to provide QoE support [8]
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