Abstract
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), in particular multirotors, are becoming the de facto tool for aerial sensing and remote inspection. In large industrial facilities, a UAV can transmit an online video stream to inspect difficult-to-access structures, such as chimneys, deposits, and towers. However, the communication range is limited, constraining the UAV operation range. This limitation can be overcome with relaying UAVs placed between the source UAV and the control station, creating a line of communication links. In this work, we assume the use of a digital data packet network technology, namely WiFi, and tackle the problem of defining the exact placement for the relaying UAVs that creates an end-to-end channel with maximal delivery of data packets. We consider asymmetric communication links and we show an increase as large as 15% in end-to-end packet delivery ratio when compared to an equidistant placement. We also discuss the deployment of such a network and propose a fully distributed method that converges to the global optimal relay positions taking, on average, times the time taken by a centralized method.
Highlights
The versatility of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV or drones) has allowed their use for multiple purposes, either recreational, engineering, scientific, or military
Aerial sensing with multirotor Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), in particular, has become common for a myriad of applications, including for remote inspection of difficult-to-access structures in large industrial plants
We addressed the case of extending the range of operation of such a UAV, adding aerial relaying support
Summary
The versatility of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV or drones) has allowed their use for multiple purposes, either recreational, engineering, scientific, or military. The work in [3], was limited to networks with homogeneous links, i.e., with similar PDR model In such conditions, the optimal relay placement is equidistant along the source to base station line. The assumption of links with similar PDR model falls short in practice, since the links often exhibit asymmetric properties due to obstacles, differences in the antennas, and local interference, among other effects These link asymmetries cause different error rates and throughput, negatively impacting the network end-to-end performance. We present a general optimal solution for the referred problem of placing relays in a line network between a source node (the source UAV) and a sink (the base station) considering asymmetrical links, in particular, each link with its own PDR model.
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