Toward Swarm Coordination: Topology-Aware Inter-UAV Routing Optimization

• Published in: IEEE transactions on vehicular technology Vol. 69; no. 9; pp. 10177 - 10187
• Main Authors: Hong, Liang, Guo, Hongzhi, Liu, Jiajia, Zhang, Yanning
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.09.2020; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: ad hoc; Ad hoc networks; Coordination; formation control; inter-UAV network; Measurement; neighbor discovery; Network topologies; Network topology; Rotary wing aircraft; Route planning; Routing; Routing protocols; Situational awareness; swarm coordination; Topology; Topology optimization; topology-aware routing; UAV swarm; Unmanned aerial vehicles; Vehicle dynamics
• ISSN: 0018-9545; 1939-9359
• DOI: 10.1109/TVT.2020.3003356

Swarm unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is an approach to the coordination of multiple UAVs as a system, which has huge advantages on mission capabilities, such as cooperative search, border surveillance, and situation awareness. For better swarm coordination, a robust inter-UAV network, especially in ad hoc mode, is needed. Due to the dynamic nature of UAV networks owing to mobility and topology change, adapting routing quickly to topology changes is one of the key components of UAV networks. Based on investigating the relationship between the swarm formation control and the network topology, we propose a proactive topology-aware scheme to track the network topology change. Through simulations on Qualnet and real-world experiments with five quadrotors, the results confirmed that the proposed scheme reduces the average delay and improves routing performance significantly.