ABSTRACT
Micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) employed in civil missions are receiving remarkable attention from both research and industry. UAVs embed more and more sensor technology, and their small mounted cameras allow for efficient mapping of large areas in short time. Yet, civil missions such as rescue operations would need a timely delivery of high-resolution images, which calls for high-speed communication such as provided by WLAN IEEE 802.11n. Driven by extensive experiments, the key finding of this contribution is that 802.11n performs poorly in highly mobile and aerial scenarios, as the throughput between UAVs drops far below the theoretical maximum as soon as they become airborne. This is partially caused by the limitations of the embedded hardware, but also a result of the network dynamics of the aerial links. In order to dissect the origins of the low performance figures, we isolate the potential causes of degradation by analyzing our data of throughput, packet loss, aircraft and antenna orientation, and cruise speed. We discuss quantitatively how practical it is to deliver high-resolution images when being exposed to aerial throughput. We believe that it will be a long way until micro UAVs transferring large-size data become reality and argue for a new amendment of IEEE 802.11 addressing the communication among highly-mobile UAVs.
- IEEE standard for information technology -- telecommunications and information exchange between systems local and metropolitan area networks -- specific requirements part 11: Wireless LAN medium access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) specifications, 2012.Google Scholar
- D. Aguayo, J. Bicket, S. Biswas, G. Judd, and R. Morris. Link-level measurements from an 802.11b mesh network. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 34(4):121--132, 2004. Google ScholarDigital Library
- M. Asadpour, D. Giustiniano, K. A. Hummel, and S. Heimlicher. Characterizing 802.11n aerial communication. In Proceedings of the second ACM MobiHoc workshop on Airborne networks and communications, ANC '13, pages 7--12, New York, NY, USA. ACM, 2013. Google ScholarDigital Library
- L. Duplay. Target detection using flying robots. Technical report, Laboratory of Intelligent Systems (LIS), EPFL, June 2012.Google Scholar
- E. Feo, L. Gambardella, and G. D. Caro. Search and rescue using mixed swarms of heterogeneous agents: Modeling, simulation, and planning. Technical Report IDSIA-05-12, April 2012.Google Scholar
- P. Forret. Megapixel Calculator - digital camera resolution. http://web.forret.com/tools/megapixel.asp.Google Scholar
- J. Heiskala and J. Terry. OFDM wireless LANs: a theoretical and practical guide. SAMS publishing Indianapolis, 2002.Google Scholar
- D. Henkel and T. Brown. On controlled node mobility in delay-tolerant networks of unmannned aerial vehicles. In International Symposium on Advance Radio Technologies, 2006.Google Scholar
- D. Henkel and T. Brown. Delay-tolerant communication using mobile robotic helper nodes. In Modeling and Optimization in Mobile, Ad Hoc, and Wireless Networks and Workshops, 2008. WiOPT 2008. 6th International Symposium on, pages 657--666. IEEE, 2008.Google Scholar
- O. Küng, C. Strecha, A. Beyeler, J.-C. Zufferey, D. Floreano, P. Fua, and F. Gervaix. The accuracy of automatic photogrammetric techniques on ultra-light uav imagery. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle in Geomatics (UAV-g), Zurich, Switzerland, pages 14--16, 2011.Google Scholar
- S. Leven, J. Zufferey, and D. Floreano. A simple and robust fixed-wing platform for outdoor flying robot experiments. In International symposium on flying insects and robots, pages 69--70, 2007.Google Scholar
- L. Meier, P. Tanskanen, L. Heng, G. H. Lee, F. Fraundorfer, and M. Pollefeys. Pixhawk: A micro aerial vehicle design for autonomous flight using onboard computer vision. Autonomous Robots, 33(1-2):21--39, 2012. Google ScholarDigital Library
- K. Pelechrinis, T. Salonidis, H. Lundgren, and N. Vaidya. Experimental characterization of 802.11n link quality at high rates. In Fifth ACM international workshop on Wireless network testbeds, experimental evaluation and characterization, WiNTECH '10, pages 39--46, New York, NY, USA. ACM, 2010. Google ScholarDigital Library
- T. Rappaport. Wireless Communications: Principles and Practice, 2nd Ed. Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 2002. Google ScholarDigital Library
- V. Shrivastava, S. Rayanchu, J. Yoonj, and S. Banerjee. 802.11n under the microscope. In 8th ACM SIGCOMM conference on Internet measurement, pages 105--110. ACM, 2008. Google ScholarDigital Library
- I. Tinnirello, D. Giustiniano, L. Scalia, and G. Bianchi. On the side-effects of proprietary solutions for fading and interference mitigation in IEEE 802.11b/g outdoor links. Computer Networks, 53(2):141--152, Feb. 2009. Google ScholarDigital Library
- E. Yanmaz, R. Kuschnig, and C. Bettstetter. Channel measurements over 802.11 a-based uav-to-ground links. In GLOBECOM 2011 Workshops, pages 1280--1284. IEEE, 2011.Google ScholarCross Ref
- E. Yanmaz, R. Kuschnig, and C. Bettstetter. Achieving air-ground communications in 802.11 networks with three-dimensional aerial mobility. In INFOCOM 2013. 32nd IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications, pages 120--124. IEEE, 2013.Google ScholarCross Ref
- W. Zhao, M. Ammar, and E. Zegura. Controlling the mobility of multiple data transport ferries in a delay-tolerant network. In INFOCOM 2005. 24th Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies, volume 2, pages 1407--1418. IEEE, 2005.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- From ground to aerial communication: dissecting WLAN 802.11n for the drones
Recommendations
Characterizing 802.11n aerial communication
ANC '13: Proceedings of the second ACM MobiHoc workshop on Airborne networks and communicationsIn Search And Rescue missions, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) equipped with cameras allow for efficient scanning of large areas. Yet, delivering high resolution images to rescuers also requires high-speed communication. In this paper, we investigate ...
Now or later?: delaying data transfer in time-critical aerial communication
CoNEXT '13: Proceedings of the ninth ACM conference on Emerging networking experiments and technologiesSearch and rescue missions are entering a new era with the advent of small scale unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with communication capabilities and embedded cameras. Yet, delivering high resolution images of the supervised surface to rescuers is time-...
An evaluative review of the VTOL technologies for unmanned and manned aerial vehicles
AbstractVTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) capabilities are desired features of both UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) and MAVs (Manned Aerial Vehicles) on condition that a comparable flight performance is achieved. VTOL is not only a very ...
Comments