Formation Control Algorithm of Multi-UAV-Based Network Infrastructure

Abstract

This paper addresses the analysis and the deployment of the network infrastructure based on multiple Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs). Despite the unprecedented potential to the mobility of the network infrastructure, there has been no effort to establish a mathematical model of the infrastructure and formation control strategies. We model the generic dynamics of the network infrastructure and derive the network throughput of the infrastructure. Through the parametrization of the model, we extract the generic factors of the network protocols and verify our model through the Network Simulator 3 (ns-3). By exploiting our network analysis model, we propose a novel formation control algorithm that determines the location of the UAVs to maximize the efficiency of the network. To achieve the objectives of the infrastructure, we define the formation-shaping effect as forces and elaborately design them using the generic factors. The formation algorithm continuously approaches to the optimized formation of a fleet of UAVs to enhance the overall throughput of the terrestrial devices. Our evaluations show that the algorithm guarantees remarkably higher throughput than the static formations. Through the dynamic transformation of the UAV formation, we believe that the multi-UAV-based network infrastructure could expand the boundary of the existing infrastructure while reducing the network traffic.