Performance Evaluation of Ad Hoc Routing in a Swarm of Autonomous Aerial Vehicles

This thesis investigates the performance of three mobile ad hoc routing protocols in the context of a swarm of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). It is proposed that a wireless network of nodes having an average of 5.1774 log n neighbors, where n is the total number of nodes in the network, has a high probability of having no partitions. By decreasing transmission range while ensuring network connectivity, and implementing multi-hop routing between nodes, spatial multiplexing is exploited whereby multiple pairs of nodes simultaneously transmit on the same channel. The proposal is evaluated using the Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing (GPSR), Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR), and Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocols in the context of a swarm of UAVs using the OPNET network simulation tool. The first-known implementation of GPSR in OPNET is constructed, and routing performance is observed when routing protocol, number of nodes, transmission range, and traffic workload are varied. Performance is evaluated based on proportion of packets successfully delivered, average packet hop count, and average end-to-end delay of packets received. Results indicate that the routing protocol choice has a significant impact on routing performance. While GPSR successfully delivers 50% more packets than OLSR, and experiences a 53% smaller end-to-end delay than AODV when routing packets in a swarm of UAVs, increasing transmission range and using direct transmission to destination nodes with no routing results in a level of performance not achieved using any of the routing protocols evaluated

Adoption of vehicular ad hoc networking protocols by networked robots

This paper focuses on the utilization of wireless networking in the robotics domain. Many researchers have already equipped their robots with wireless communication capabilities, stimulated by the observation that multi-robot systems tend to have several advantages over their single-robot counterparts. Typically, this integration of wireless communication is tackled in a quite pragmatic manner, only a few authors presented novel Robotic Ad Hoc Network (RANET) protocols that were designed specifically with robotic use cases in mind. This is in sharp contrast with the domain of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET). This observation is the starting point of this paper. If the results of previous efforts focusing on VANET protocols could be reused in the RANET domain, this could lead to rapid progress in the field of networked robots. To investigate this possibility, this paper provides a thorough overview of the related work in the domain of robotic and vehicular ad hoc networks. Based on this information, an exhaustive list of requirements is defined for both types. It is concluded that the most significant difference lies in the fact that VANET protocols are oriented towards low throughput messaging, while RANET protocols have to support high throughput media streaming as well. Although not always with equal importance, all other defined requirements are valid for both protocols. This leads to the conclusion that cross-fertilization between them is an appealing approach for future RANET research. To support such developments, this paper concludes with the definition of an appropriate working plan

A Secure Group Communication Architecture for a Swarm of Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

This thesis investigates the application of a secure group communication architecture to a swarm of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). A multicast secure group communication architecture for the low earth orbit (LEO) satellite environment is evaluated to determine if it can be effectively adapted to a swarm of UAVs and provide secure, scalable, and efficient communications. The performance of the proposed security architecture is evaluated with two other commonly used architectures using a discrete event computer simulation developed using MatLab. Performance is evaluated in terms of the scalability and efficiency of the group key distribution and management scheme when the swarm size, swarm mobility, multicast group join and departure rates are varied. The metrics include the total keys distributed over the simulation period, the average number of times an individual UAV must rekey, the average bandwidth used to rekey the swarm, and the average percentage of battery consumed by a UAV to rekey over the simulation period. The proposed security architecture can successfully be applied to a swarm of autonomous UAVs using current technology. The proposed architecture is more efficient and scalable than the other tested and commonly-used architectures. Over all the tested configurations, the proposed architecture distributes 55.2 – 94.8% fewer keys, rekeys 59.0 - 94.9% less often per UAV, uses 55.2 - 87.9% less bandwidth to rekey, and reduces the battery consumption by 16.9 – 85.4%

Routing schemes in FANETs: a survey

Flying ad hoc network (FANET) is a self-organizing wireless network that enables inexpensive, flexible, and easy-to-deploy flying nodes, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), to communicate among themselves in the absence of fixed network infrastructure. FANET is one of the emerging networks that has an extensive range of next-generation applications. Hence, FANET plays a significant role in achieving application-based goals. Routing enables the flying nodes to collaborate and coordinate among themselves and to establish routes to radio access infrastructure, particularly FANET base station (BS). With a longer route lifetime, the effects of link disconnections and network partitions reduce. Routing must cater to two main characteristics of FANETs that reduce the route lifetime. Firstly, the collaboration nature requires the flying nodes to exchange messages and to coordinate among themselves, causing high energy consumption. Secondly, the mobility pattern of the flying nodes is highly dynamic in a three-dimensional space and they may be spaced far apart, causing link disconnection. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of the limited research work of routing schemes in FANETs. Different aspects, including objectives, challenges, routing metrics, characteristics, and performance measures, are covered. Furthermore, we present open issues

Internet of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: QoS Provisioning in Aerial Ad-Hoc Networks

Aerial ad-hoc networks have the potential to enable smart services while maintaining communication between the ground system and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). Previous research has focused on enabling aerial data-centric smart services while integrating the benefits of aerial objects such as UAVs in hostile and non-hostile environments. Quality of service (QoS) provisioning in UAV-assisted communication is a challenging research theme in aerial ad-hoc networks environments. Literature on aerial ad hoc networks lacks cooperative service-oriented modeling for distributed network environments, relying on costly static base station-oriented centralized network environments. Towards this end, this paper proposes a quality of service provisioning framework for a UAV-assisted aerial ad hoc network environment (QSPU) focusing on reliable aerial communication. The UAV’s aerial mobility and service parameters are modelled considering highly dynamic aerial ad-hoc environments. UAV-centric mobility models are utilized to develop a complete aerial routing framework. A comparative performance evaluation demonstrates the benefits of the proposed aerial communication framework. It is evident that QSPU outperforms the state-of-the-art techniques in terms of a number of service-oriented performance metrics in a UAV-assisted aerial ad-hoc network environment

Physics-Based Swarm Intelligence for Disaster Relief Communications

This study explores how a swarm of aerial mobile vehicles can provide network connectivity and meet the stringent requirements of public protection and disaster relief operations. In this context, we design a physics-based controlled mobility strategy, which we name the extended Virtual Force Protocol (VFPe), allowing self-propelled nodes, and in particular here unmanned aerial vehicles, to fly autonomously and cooperatively. In this way, ground devices scattered on the operation site may establish communications through the wireless multi-hop communication routes formed by the network of aerial nodes. We further investigate through simulations the behavior of the VFPe protocol, notably focusing on the way node location information is disseminated into the network as well as on the impact of the number of exploration nodes on the overall network performance.Comment: in International Conference on Ad Hoc Networks and Wireless, Jul 2016, Lille, Franc

A Secure Group Communication Architecture for Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

This paper investigates the application of a secure group communication architecture to a swarm of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). A multicast secure group communication architecture for the low earth orbit (LEO) satellite environment is evaluated to determine if it can be effectively adapted to a swarm of UAVs and provide secure, scalable, and efficient communications. The performance of the proposed security architecture is evaluated with two other commonly used architectures using a discrete event computer simulation developed using MATLAB. Performance is evaluated in terms of the scalability and efficiency of the group key distribution and management scheme when the swarm size, swarm mobility, multicast group join and departure rates are varied. The metrics include the total keys distributed over the simulation period, the average number of times an individual UAV must rekey, the average bandwidth used to rekey the swarm, and the average percentage of battery consumed by a UAV to rekey over the simulation period. The proposed security architecture can successfully be applied to a swarm of autonomous UAVs using current technology. The proposed architecture is more efficient and scalable than the other tested and commonly used architectures. Over all the tested configurations, the proposed architecture distributes 55.2–94.8% fewer keys, rekeys 59.0–94.9% less often per UAV, uses 55.2–87.9% less bandwidth to rekey, and reduces the battery consumption by 16.9–85.4%

Design of an UAV swarm

This master thesis tries to give an overview on the general aspects involved in the design of an UAV swarm. UAV swarms are continuoulsy gaining popularity amongst researchers and UAV manufacturers, since they allow greater success rates in task accomplishing with reduced times. Appart from this, multiple UAVs cooperating between them opens a new field of missions that can only be carried in this way. All the topics explained within this master thesis will explain all the agents involved in the design of an UAV swarm, from the communication protocols between them, navigation and trajectory analysis and task allocation