A novel communications protocol using geographic routing for swarming UAVs performing a Search Mission

Author

Lidowski, Robert L. ; Mullins, Barry E. ; Baldwin, Rusty O.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Air Force Inst. of Technol., Dayton, OH

fYear

2009

fDate

9-13 March 2009

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

7

Abstract

This paper develops a novel communications protocol for autonomous swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) searching a 2-dimensional grid. The search protocol, the UAV search mission protocol (USMP), combines inter-UAV communication with geographic routing to improve search efficiency in terms of total searches, distance traveled by UAVs, and the minimization of UAV direction changes. By determining where search state updates impact search decisions, messages are geographically routed to improve search efficiency. USMP and the geographic greedy perimeter stateless routing (GPSR) protocol are studied via simulation using OPNET modeler 12.0. Geographic routing degrades performance by at least 20% in total searches and distance traveled, but improves direction changes by 6.7%. Overall, USMP improves performance by as much as 188% compared to scenarios without inter-UAV communication.

Keywords

remotely operated vehicles; routing protocols; telerobotics; communications protocol; geographic routing; greedy perimeter stateless routing; search mission; search mission protocol; unmanned aerial vehicles; Degradation; Distributed algorithms; Face detection; Force sensors; Government; Large-scale systems; Paper technology; Reconnaissance; Routing protocols; Unmanned aerial vehicles; communications; geographic routing; unmanned aerial vehicles;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Pervasive Computing and Communications, 2009. PerCom 2009. IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Galveston, TX

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-3304-9

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-3304-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PERCOM.2009.4912764

Filename

4912764