Nash network formation among unmanned aerial vehicles

• Published in: Wireless networks Vol. 26; no. 3; pp. 1781 - 1793
• Main Authors: Xing, Na, Zong, Qun, Tian, Bailing, Wang, Qing, Dou, Liqian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.04.2020; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Algorithms; Attenuation; Changing environments; Communications Engineering; Communications systems; Computer Communication Networks; Computer simulation; Electrical Engineering; Energy consumption; Engineering; Game theory; Ground stations; Inspection; IT in Business; Mathematical models; Military technology; Network formation; Networks; Unmanned aerial vehicles; Wireless networks; Multi-hop network; Nash equilibrium; Network formation; Unmanned aerial vehicles; Game theory
• ISSN: 1022-0038; 1572-8196
• DOI: 10.1007/s11276-018-1866-1

Multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are applicable to numerous civil and military scenarios, such as rescue, surveillance, inspection, mapping, and so on. In fact, there exists lifetime and distance restrictions in UAVs due to the limited energy and signal attenuation. Therefore, a distributed algorithm is proposed which makes use of cooperative communication to ensure reliable information transmission of UAVs in communication-limited environments. First, a system model is developed by jointly considering the achievable rate, delay and energy consumption, which constitute the utility function of UAVs. Then, in order to study the interactions among UAVs, we present a game framework which allows the UAVs making decision under the global topology. Via a hybrid of the pure-strategy and the mixed-strategy Nash network formation algorithm, a multi-hop tree structure network that connects the UAVs and the ground station is established. Based on our numerical simulation, it demonstrates that the UAVs can adapt to the changing environment. Finally, some comparisons are provided to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.