Connected multi UAV task planning for Flying Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

Flying Ad Hoc Networks (FANETs) is one of the most effective multi communication architectures through its capability of transferring data simultaneously without any infrastructure. The FANET task allocation problem is one-to-one assignment of agents to tasks so that the overall benefit of all the agents is maximized by taking delays and costs into account, given a set of agents and a set of tasks. A coordination based task allocation system ensuring spatial and temporal coordination between UAVs is essential for FANETs. In this paper, a new multi UAV task planning heuristic is proposed for FANETs to visit all target points in a minimum time, while preserving all time network connectivity. Effectiveness in the mission execution and cost efficiency in the task allocation have been presented by conducting a bunch of experiments performed on 2D terrains. Performance results validated the usage of our algorithms for the connected multi UAV task planning problem for FANET.