Design of Ad Hoc Wireless Mesh Networks Formed by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles with Advanced Mechanical Automation

Ad hoc wireless mesh networks formed by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with wireless transceivers (access points (APs)) are increasingly being touted as being able to provide a flexible "on-the-fly" communications infrastructure that can collect and transmit sensor data from sensors in remote, wilderness, or disaster-hit areas. Recent advances in the mechanical automation of UAVs have resulted in separable APs and replaceable batteries that can be carried by UAVs and placed at arbitrary locations in the field. These advanced mechanized UAV mesh networks pose interesting questions in terms of the design of the network architecture and the optimal UAV scheduling algorithms. This paper studies a range of network architectures that depend on the mechanized automation (AP separation and battery replacement) capabilities of UAVs and proposes heuristic UAV scheduling algorithms for each network architecture, which are benchmarked against optimal designs.Comment: 12 page

Development of a drone-based miniaturized payload for LoRa communications experiment proof-of-concept

The remote sensing and interference detector with RadIometry and vegeTation Analysis (RITA), is a payload of 1U that will fly onboard Alainsat-1 a 3U CubeSat. Among other tests and experiments, it will perform a proof of concept of a LoRa custom module for space-to-Earth communications between the satellite and a terrestrial network of Internet of Things sensors. The LoRa communications experiment proof-of-concept has been performed using several ground IoT nodes and a miniaturized drone-based payload. The communications have been performed using two MAC protocols which are compatible with an IoT scenario: pure ALOHA and CSMA/CA with RTS/CTS. In both protocols, the useful information to be sent is the data contained in the Data Packet. In this packet, the data obtained by the capacitive soil moisture sensor and the temperature sensor are stored. In order to perform LoRa communications experiment proof-of-concept, two measurement campaigns have been realized. In the first measurement campaign, the correct functioning of the LoRa modules and sensors has been tested. In the second measurement campaign, several experiments have been performed in which pure ALOHA and CSMA/CA protocols have been tested. In order to test different experiments with different configurations of the protocols, a general code structure has been designed where both the ground nodes and the drone payload are controlled by a command sent by the user. Therefore, the choice of the protocol to be used as well as the configurable parameters of each protocol are sent through a remote command. Finally, the results obtained in both protocols are analyzed and it is concluded which of the two has better performance against an IoT communications scenario