Energy Efficient Task Cooperation for Multi-UAV Networks: A Coalition Formation Game Approach

Heyu Luan,Xiaodu Liu,Huiming Qian,Yitao Xu,Xiaobing Tong,Dianxiong Liu,Zhiyong Du

doi:10.1109/access.2020.3016009

Abstract

In this paper, we study the multi-task cooperation problem for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms, where the UAV energy consumption is taken into consideration during location scheduling and task implementation. One task may need the cooperation of several UAVs with specific capabilities. To avoid unreasonable task allocation, we quantify the mission properties of UAVs and task areas. We comprehensively consider the overlapping and complementary relationship of the UAV's task types, so that UAVs can form corresponding collective execution tasks according to the task attributes. Based on the coalition game theory, we model the distributed task assignment problem of UAVs as a coalition formation game (CFG). We propose a task allocation algorithm, and then prove that it can achieve the joint optimization of energy and task completion by decision-making of UAVs in finite iterations. With the equilibrium properties of coalition formation in UAV networks, we further optimize the position of UAVs to minimize the network energy consumption. Simulation results verify that the proposed method can reduce the flight loss with high task completion degree.

Highlights

unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) were mainly used to perform specific tasks [7]–[10], where each task was assumed can be completed by one UAV, so that one-to-one task assignment strategies were developed for optimizing task execution efficiency
RELATED WORK 1) COALITION FORMATION GAME THEORY This paper focuses on the problem of task cooperation and mutual influence among multiple UAVs
The simulation scene is set to a two-dimensional space of [0; 2000] [0; 2000] square meters, nodes in space are placed as UAVs to perform tasks

Summary

Introduction

A. BACKGROUND AND MOTIVATION Nowadays, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been employed to perform various tasks in many scenarios due to their flexible features, such as border patrol, reconnaissance, attack and enhanced communication [1]–[3]. Multiple UAVs can form UAV swarms to perform remote, large-scale and complex tasks [4]–[6]. The task assignment of UAVs has attracted widespread attention in recent years [7]–[13]. UAVs were mainly used to perform specific tasks [7]–[10], where each task was assumed can be completed by one UAV, so that one-to-one task assignment strategies were developed for optimizing task execution efficiency. The authors in [7] studied the task

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