A Distributed UAV Management System Inspired by Packet-Switched Networks

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are expected to be used in various applications such as delivery services and sensing from airspaces in smart cities. In the future, UAV control systems must address a densely mixed environment comprising various services and users regardless of individuals or businesses. However, users cannot flexibly join or leave the system because of their centralized design. This letter proposes a distributed UAV management system inspired by packet-switched networks, to address dense UAV environments. The proposed system controls autonomous UAVs as packets in packet-switched networks. Each UAV flies along a path composed of links between ground beacon devices as routers. We analyzed the characteristics of the proposed system in dense situations using computer simulation. Simulation results indicate that the proposed system can handle numerous UAVs based on packet-switched networks.