Wireless Sensor and Networking Technologies for Swarms of Aquatic Surface Drones

In this paper, we discuss wireless sensor and networking technologies for swarms of inexpensive aquatic surface drones in the context of the HANCAD project. The goal is to enable the swarm to perform maritime tasks such as sea-border patrolling and environmental monitoring, while keeping the cost of each drone low. Communication between drones is essential for the success of the project. Preliminary experiments show that XBee modules are promising for energy efficient multi-hop drone-to-drone communication.