Evaluation of a UAV-Aided WSN for Military Operations

Abstract

A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) assisted with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is flexible and its lifetime becomes longer due to reduced energy consumption in the static sensor nodes. This paper analyses the capabilities of using UAVs in WSNs for enhancing various military and surveillance capabilities. It presents three architectures of UAV-aided WSNs and it uses a realistic simulation environment to evaluate the energy consumption and network lifetime of a UAV-assisted WSN under two different use cases: (1) the UAV is used as relay node; and (2) the UAV is used as mobile sink. In Use Case 1, the network lifetime is more than five times longer than in Use Case 2. Using a UAV as a relay node preserves the network energy for a longer period, regardless of the flying distance of the UAV. In our experiment, three different percentages of distance from the remote Base-Station to the Cluster-Head were involved. If a UAV is flying on 50% distance, the average energy per node expires very quickly. If the distance percentage is at 10%, the average energy per node drops at a much slower rate.