Ultra-fast, Autonomous, Reconfigurable UAV Communication System
Location
Atrium
Session Format
Poster Presentation
Research Area Topic:
Engineering and Material Sciences - Electrical
Co-Presenters and Faculty Mentors or Advisors
Dr. Rami Haddad - Faculty advisor
Dr. Fernando Rios-Gutierrez - Faculty advisor
Abstract
The recent years have witnessed an increase in natural disasters in which the destruction of essential communication infrastructure has significantly affected the number of casualties. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina in the United States resulted in over 1,900 deaths, three million land-line phones disconnections, and more than 2000 cell sites going out of service. This incident highlighted an urgent need for a quick-deployment efficient communication network for emergency relief purposes. In this research, a fully autonomous system to deploy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as the first phase disaster recovery communication network for wide-area relief is presented. As part of this system, an automation algorithm has been developed to control the deployment and positioning of the UAVs based on a traditional cell network structure utilizing 7-cell clusters in a hexagonal pattern. This system utilizes the open source MAVLink protocol for communication between the UAVs and the ground station. Since this is an outdoor system, localization is based solely on GPS, which is the only limiting factor. The distributed execution of the algorithm is based on a centralized management of UAV cells through assigning higher ranked UAVs referred to as supernodes. These supernodes in the distribution correspond to the vertices of the hexagonal cells which can be viewed as base stations. The algorithm autonomously elects supernodes based on weighted variables and dynamically handles any changes in total number of UAVs in the system through the clustering algorithm. Overall this system represents a novel approach for handling a large-scale autonomous deployment of a UAV communications networks. In addition to the software algorithm, a fully functional control interface was developed which allowed for full control of the system both locally and over an internet connection. The proposed autonomous communication network was verified and validated using software simulation and physical testing using identical quadrotor UAVs.
Keywords
UAV, Autonomous, Communications, Disaster relief, Mavlink, Drone
Presentation Type and Release Option
Presentation (Open Access)
Start Date
4-24-2015 10:45 AM
End Date
4-24-2015 12:00 PM
Recommended Citation
Bupe, Paul Jr, "Ultra-fast, Autonomous, Reconfigurable UAV Communication System" (2015). GS4 Georgia Southern Student Scholars Symposium. 29.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/research_symposium/2015/2015/29
Ultra-fast, Autonomous, Reconfigurable UAV Communication System
Atrium
The recent years have witnessed an increase in natural disasters in which the destruction of essential communication infrastructure has significantly affected the number of casualties. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina in the United States resulted in over 1,900 deaths, three million land-line phones disconnections, and more than 2000 cell sites going out of service. This incident highlighted an urgent need for a quick-deployment efficient communication network for emergency relief purposes. In this research, a fully autonomous system to deploy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as the first phase disaster recovery communication network for wide-area relief is presented. As part of this system, an automation algorithm has been developed to control the deployment and positioning of the UAVs based on a traditional cell network structure utilizing 7-cell clusters in a hexagonal pattern. This system utilizes the open source MAVLink protocol for communication between the UAVs and the ground station. Since this is an outdoor system, localization is based solely on GPS, which is the only limiting factor. The distributed execution of the algorithm is based on a centralized management of UAV cells through assigning higher ranked UAVs referred to as supernodes. These supernodes in the distribution correspond to the vertices of the hexagonal cells which can be viewed as base stations. The algorithm autonomously elects supernodes based on weighted variables and dynamically handles any changes in total number of UAVs in the system through the clustering algorithm. Overall this system represents a novel approach for handling a large-scale autonomous deployment of a UAV communications networks. In addition to the software algorithm, a fully functional control interface was developed which allowed for full control of the system both locally and over an internet connection. The proposed autonomous communication network was verified and validated using software simulation and physical testing using identical quadrotor UAVs.
