Design of a Transport Protocol of a Communication Network for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Networks
Ad Hoc Network, Wireless Sensor Networks, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, FANET, Communication Networks, Transport Protocol, Zigbee.
Research on Multi Unmanned Aerial Systems (Multi-UAV) is growing in recent years. Among several scientific and technical challenges, a robust data communication network is crucial for the cooperation and collaboration between the UAVs.
The network design must take into account factors such as the purpose of the mission, trajectory and path planning, sensor data collection and energy supply. In this way, the present work presents the specification of a communication protocol for a squadron Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to be used in the scanning of the rocket impact area for the SPACEVANT 2 project.
Thus, a study on the main characteristics of communication networks for multi-UAV systems and the specificities of the application addressed in this project is done. Strategies for the scanning of the rocket impact area are proposed. In order to do a comparative analysis between these strategies and to define an appropriate protocol for the application, the characteristics of the networks for multi-UAV systems that are more appropriate to them are analyzed.
In this context, a network architecture based on Xbee Pro 900HP S3B modules integrated with Raspberry Pi is used. A test plan with Xbee devices is designed and implemented to evaluate the performance of this protocol on the proposed network architecture in terms of robustness, reliability.
In order to measure performance in the possible UAV squad formation scenarios, software with the protocol will be implemented to measure throughput, packet loss and other performance indicators in the communication links between the different nodes of the network.