Joint route planning for UAV and sensor network for data retrieval

Large scale data gathering from remote sensor networks is a key issue in many remote deployments. Manual data collection is difficult and sending ground robots to collect information can be complex due to uneven terrain. Alternately, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) can be used to collect data from sensor networks. The UAV will fly over the sensors gathering the data. However, to minimize the flight time of the UAV and maximize the network lifetime, a joint route optimization for UAV and sensor network must be carried out. Additionally, the UAV has kinematic constraints and communication range limitations. Determining solution with these constraints is difficult and computationally intensive. In this paper, we propose a heuristic solution by decoupling the problem into four sub-problems. The first is to determine clusters of sensors with communication range limitations. The second is to efficiently connect the clusters. The third is to design the route inside the cluster that will maximize the information collection and the fourth is to design a path planner for the UAV for data collection. We show the proposed solution through an example.