Development of a Distributed Energy-Aware Position Algorithm for Flying Ad-Hoc Network

Abstract

The operational efficiency of FANET surveying a specific region is affected by the nature of the UAV's node placement, routing protocol, energy-aware task distribution, and node interaction amongst others. In this paper, three drones viz: Drone -1 (D_-1), Master Drone (D_M), and Drone 1 (D₁) surveyed as FANET with D_M aggregating packets from D_-1 and D₁ and communicating with the Static Ground Control Station (SGCS). The initial energy level of the drones’ batteries was assumed to be 95% to 100% full prior to take-off. The energy consumed by a flying drone is calculated using drag, lift, and transmitting/receiving energy usage. For the node exchange technique, a number of events that covered the surveillance distance were 350. The first swapping command is triggered when the D_M depletes 40% of its energy, followed by a second swapping command upon an additional 20% energy loss. To mitigate the risk of UAV failure resulting from energy depletion during surveillance, the mission was aborted, and all three UAVs initiated a return-to-base protocol once the energy level of the UAV functioning as the D_M reached or dropped below the designated edge energy level. 796.134 J was obtained as threshold energy. Results obtained for the throughput, end-to-end delay, and Packet Delivery Ratio was 0.2343 Mbps, 0.009 x 10^-3 sec, and 88.76% respectively. The developed model supports energy-aware and position of the UAVs during surveillance. It provides a dynamic UAV node placement for pipeline surveillance and interaction-based task distribution for cooperative task sharing between the UAVs and SGCS.