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Optimal UAV deployment with star topology in area coverage problems

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Abstract

UAVs in most real-world deployments communicate with a ground control station either in a one-hop manner, which has a limited working range, or relies on infrastructure support such as satellite communication, which is expensive. Although multi-hop transmission is more economic, it is lossy and generally incurs large delays. In this paper, we consider a mixed method, where a few UAVs are equipped with satellite modules, and aggregate and forward traffic of nearby UAVs. The surrounding UAVs and the forwarding UAV form a star topology. Based on this model, we design an UAV formation strategy to cover a given region to minimize both the total number of UAVs and the number of UAVs with satellite modules. Since these two goals may be competing, we propose seven strategies and analyze them theoretically. Simulations show that a good tradeoff between the two goals can be obtained when each star network consists of four UAVs.

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Data availability

Software and data are available on request from the corresponding author (X. Zhu).

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (62372230, 61972199, 61931011).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computer Science and Technology, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China

    Xiaojun Zhu & Xiaowei Zhao

  2. College of Electronic and Information Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China

    Chao Dong

Authors
  1. Xiaojun Zhu
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  2. Xiaowei Zhao
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  3. Chao Dong
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Contributions

Xiaojun Zhu was involved in the writing—original draft, methodology, investigation, and supervision. Xiaowei Zhao contributed to the methodology, software, and investigation. Chao Dong contributed to the conceptualization and methodology. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Xiaojun Zhu.

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Zhu, X., Zhao, X. & Dong, C. Optimal UAV deployment with star topology in area coverage problems. J Supercomput 80, 15464–15484 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-024-06064-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-024-06064-2

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