Analysis of Online-Delaunay Navigation for Time Sensitive Targeting

Given the drawbacks of leaving time-sensitive targeting (TST) strictly to humans, there is value to the investigation of alternative approaches to TST operations that employ autonomous systems. This paper accomplishes five things. First, it proposes a short-hop abbreviated routing paradigm (SHARP) - based on Delaunay triangulations (DT), ad-hoc communication, and autonomous control - for recognizing and engaging TSTs that, in theory, will improve upon persistence, the volume of influence, autonomy, range, and situational awareness. Second, it analyzes the minimum timeframe need by a strike (weapons enabled) aircraft to navigate to the location of a TST under SHARP. Third, it shows the distribution of the transmission radius required to communicate between an arbitrary sender and receiver. Fourth, it analyzes the extent to which connectivity, among nodes with constant communication range, decreases as the number of nodes decreases. Fifth, it shows the how SHARP reduces the amount of energy required to communicate between two nodes. Mathematica 5.0.1.0 is used to generate data for all metrics. JMP 5.0.1.2 is used to analyze the statistical nature of Mathematica\u27s output

Design, Analysis and Evaluation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Ad hoc Network for Emergency Response Communications

In any emergency situation, it is paramount that communication be established between those affected by an emergency and the emergency responders. This communication is typically initiated by contacting an emergency service number such as 9-1-1 which will then notify the appropriate responders. The communication link relies heavily on the use of the public telephone network. If an emergency situation causes damage to, or otherwise interrupts, the public telephone network then those affected by the emergency are unable to call for help or warn others. A backup emergency response communication system is required to restore communication in areas where the public telephone network is inoperable. The use of unmanned aerial vehicles is proposed to act as mobile base stations and route wireless communication to the nearest working public telephone network access point. This thesis performs an analysis based on wireless attributes associated with communication in this type of network such as channel capacity, network density and propagation delay

Hedonic Coalition Formation for Distributed Task Allocation among Wireless Agents

Autonomous wireless agents such as unmanned aerial vehicles or mobile base stations present a great potential for deployment in next-generation wireless networks. While current literature has been mainly focused on the use of agents within robotics or software applications, we propose a novel usage model for self-organizing agents suited to wireless networks. In the proposed model, a number of agents are required to collect data from several arbitrarily located tasks. Each task represents a queue of packets that require collection and subsequent wireless transmission by the agents to a central receiver. The problem is modeled as a hedonic coalition formation game between the agents and the tasks that interact in order to form disjoint coalitions. Each formed coalition is modeled as a polling system consisting of a number of agents which move between the different tasks present in the coalition, collect and transmit the packets. Within each coalition, some agents can also take the role of a relay for improving the packet success rate of the transmission. The proposed algorithm allows the tasks and the agents to take distributed decisions to join or leave a coalition, based on the achieved benefit in terms of effective throughput, and the cost in terms of delay. As a result of these decisions, the agents and tasks structure themselves into independent disjoint coalitions which constitute a Nash-stable network partition. Moreover, the proposed algorithm allows the agents and tasks to adapt the topology to environmental changes such as the arrival/removal of tasks or the mobility of the tasks. Simulation results show how the proposed algorithm improves the performance, in terms of average player (agent or task) payoff, of at least 30.26% (for a network of 5 agents with up to 25 tasks) relatively to a scheme that allocates nearby tasks equally among agents.Comment: to appear, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computin

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

Aerial Networking: Creating a Resilient Wireless Network for Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

The goal of this report is to design the groundwork of a wireless communications system between several Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) that will help conduct Search and Rescue (SAR) missions. UAVs could help with these missions because they can provide aerial reconnaissance at low cost and risk. To maximize efficiency, the architecture of our ad hoc network includes several UAVs with cameras (drones) relaying their data through a central UAV called a mothership. Our specific objectives, which we successfully met, were to demonstrate the feasibility of such a network in the laboratory and to lay the groundwork for the physical implementation of the system, including the assembly of a motherboard and Wi-Fi transmitters that will perform the communication between the user and UAVs

Air-to-Ground Channel Characterization for Low-Height UAVs in Realistic Network Deployments

Due to the decrease in cost, size and weight, \acp{UAV} are becoming more and more popular for general-purpose civil and commercial applications. Provision of communication services to \acp{UAV} both for user data and control messaging by using off-the-shelf terrestrial cellular deployments introduces several technical challenges. In this paper, an approach to the air-to-ground channel characterization for low-height \acp{UAV} based on an extensive measurement campaign is proposed, giving special attention to the comparison of the results when a typical directional antenna for network deployments is used and when a quasi-omnidirectional one is considered. Channel characteristics like path loss, shadow fading, root mean square delay and Doppler frequency spreads and the K-factor are statistically characterized for different suburban scenarios.Comment: 15 pages, accepted in IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagatio