Unmanned aerial vehicle swarm synchronization protocol

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) swarms are not common due to lack of readily available coordinated protocols and applications for synchronizing UAV swarms in outdoor environments. To solve the problem, this study design, implement, and evaluate a leaderfollower Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Swarm Synchronization Protocol (UAVSSP). Unlike other studies that deal with UAV swarm synchronization, this study introduces the concept of pair correlation and back propagation communication scheme amongst UAVs in a swarm. UAVSSP uses Standard Vicsek Model (SVM) Self-Propelled Particle (SPP) functions to predict the velocity and position vectors in next time step (t+1) of a UAV within a swarm. Furthermore, the protocol uses Directional pair correlation function to monitor the distance between a UAV and its leader. For implementation and evaluation of the UAVSSP, Virtual Robot Experimentation Platform (V-Rep) was used to test 1) the cost of wireless transmission range on the synchronization time of UAVs in different shapes using UAVSSP, 2) the cost of networking topology on the synchronization time of UAVs using UAVSSP and 3) communication error rate using UAVSSP. In the cost of wireless transmission range matrix, we were investigating the agility of UAV swarm synchronization in different communication transmission range. The cost of networking topology matrix was dealing with investigating the impacts of UAV networking arrangement in a swarm. From the experiments conducted, we learned that communication error rate above 3.5% affect negatively the performance of UAVSSP. Adding on the above mentioned observation, a developed protocol recorded high performance when using single-hop MANET routing in V formation. Alteration of casting (unicasting, multicasting and broadcasting) method does not affect UAVSSP performance.