Distributed scheduling for unmanned aerial vehicle networks with full-duplex radios and multi-packet reception

Abstract

Applications of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) ad-hoc networks have raised challenges in the design of distributed scheduling schemes since those applications require stringent quality of service (QoS) in complicated environments. Most existing scheduling designs for UAV ad-hoc networks are based on traditional physical layer techniques, such as half-duplex radios without multi-packet reception capability. However, recent advances in interference cancellation and signal processing techniques can enable full-duplex radios (FDR) and multi-packet reception (MPR) capability, which will have significant impacts on the design of link layer algorithm, especially scheduling. In this paper, we study the distributed scheduling issue in UAV ad-hoc networks with FDRs and MPR capability. The distributed scheduling problem in the presence of perfect and imperfect channel state information are formulated as a combinatorial optimization problem and a discrete stochastic optimization problem, respectively. Simulation results show that physical layer FDR and MPR capability have significant impacts on the performance of UAV ad-hoc networks. We also investigate the convergence property of proposed scheme and the effect of channel estimiation errors.