Reliable and Seamless Communications of Networked IAV in Container Terminal Using UAV Technology

Abstract Managing container loading and unloading operations at a container terminal using Intelligent Autonomous Vehicle (IAV) is challenging, especially at intersections in the yard, which are often inevitable. For ensuring efficient and accident-free management of these intersections, the IAV must cooperate by exchanging messages. Due to signal obstruction at these intersections, indirect communication is established through an additional relay node to ensure reliable communication. This paper proposes distributed approach using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) connectivity to avoid collision and deadlock between IAV at intersections. Due to the obstacles formed by stacked containers blocking the radio transmissions, the proposed algorithm automatically switches the ongoing communication through the UAV to ensure successful communication at intersections. Thus, the idea of introducing UAV as communication relay in a container terminal is an interesting solution that we have adopted in this work. Simulation techniques are used to evaluate our proposal. The obtained results confirm that our UAV-based approach ensures reliable communication and automated intersections management in the yard while further ensuring the safety of IAV traffic.