Pipe Routing with Topology Control for UAV Networks

Routing protocols help in transmitting the sensed data from UAVs monitoring the targets (called target UAVs) to the BS. However, the highly dynamic nature of an autonomous, decentralized UAV network leads to frequent route breaks or traffic disruptions. Traditional routing schemes cannot quickly adapt to dynamic UAV networks and/or incur large control overhead and delays. To establish stable, high-quality routes from target UAVs to the BS, we design a hybrid reactive routing scheme called pipe routing that is mobility, congestion, and energy-aware. The pipe routing scheme discovers routes on-demand and proactively switches to alternate high-quality routes within a limited region around the active routes (called the pipe) when needed, reducing the number of route breaks and increasing data throughput. We then design a novel topology control-based pipe routing scheme to maintain robust connectivity in the pipe region around the active routes, leading to improved route stability and increased throughput with minimal impact on the coverage performance of the UAV network.

A Deep Q-Learning based, Base-Station Connectivity-Aware, Decentralized Pheromone Mobility Model for Autonomous UAV Networks

UAV networks consisting of low SWaP (size, weight, and power), fixed-wing UAVs are used in many applications, including area monitoring, search and rescue, surveillance, and tracking. Performing these operations efficiently requires a scalable, decentralized, autonomous UAV network architecture with high network connectivity. Whereas fast area coverage is needed for quickly sensing the area, strong node degree and base station (BS) connectivity are needed for UAV control and coordination and for transmitting sensed information to the BS in real time. However, the area coverage and connectivity exhibit a fundamental trade-off: maintaining connectivity restricts the UAVs' ability to explore. In this paper, we first present a node degree and BS connectivity-aware distributed pheromone (BS-CAP) mobility model to autonomously coordinate the UAV movements in a decentralized UAV network. This model maintains a desired connectivity among 1-hop neighbors and to the BS while achieving fast area coverage. Next, we propose a deep Q-learning policy based BS-CAP model (BSCAP-DQN) to further tune and improve the coverage and connectivity trade-off. Since it is not practical to know the complete topology of such a network in real time, the proposed mobility models work online, are fully distributed, and rely on neighborhood information. Our simulations demonstrate that both proposed models achieve efficient area coverage and desired node degree and BS connectivity, improving significantly over existing schemes.