Path planning for aerial sensor networks with connectivity constraints

Abstract

© 2017 IEEE. Wireless sensor networks (WSN) based on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are ideal platforms for monitoring dynamics over larger service area. On the other hand, aerial sensor networks (ASNs) are often required to be connected with a command center for sending data and receiving control messages in real time. In this paper, we study the problem of path planning for ASNs with connectivity constraints. The primary goal of path planning is driving UAVs to locations where the most informative measurements can be collected. Meanwhile, the worst link's capacity is assured to be greater than a pre-defined requirement. We proposed a solution for the path planning problem and it consists of two modules: network coordinator (NC) and motion controller (MC). The NC manages the topology of relay-assisted wireless communication networks. For the design of MC, we compare two motion strategies: maximum entropy and maximum mutual information. The simulation results show that our proposed solution achieves accurate signal reconstruction while maintaining the connectivity. We conclude that it's important to enable UAV-to-UAV communications for future ASN-based applications.