Constructing a reliable and fast recoverable network for drones

Abstract

In recent years, due to the technological development of various kinds of drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), drones have emerged as an effective solution for a wide area of applications. In such applications, employing multiple drones promises a better way to carry out a given mission than employing a single drone. To utilize multiple drones, all drones should establish a network that can provide connectivity among themselves. In this paper, we propose GCS-routing, a routing protocol for multiple drones employed by a ground control system (GCS). GCS-routing utilizes the information of drones that can be obtained from GCS, such as geographic information and per-drone flight schedules. The actual implementation of GCS-routing was applied to a fleet of drones, and evaluated in various aspects.