Brief analysis of drone swarms communication

Abstract

Swarm intelligence has received much research attention in recent years. As a typical application of swarm intelligence, swarm of drones systems generally exhibit decentralized control achieved through simple agent behaviors and interactions developing a self-organization that is considered an emergence of order from the system. Together the system is greater than the sum of its parts, capable of solving complex problems that no agent could accomplish singularly. Effective communication mechanisms are a key requirement for drone swarms and their meaningful deployment. Swarm with a large size requires a fully distributed communication system which scales well and optimizes the “many-to-many” communication. At a basic level a drone swarm is a floating dynamic wireless network, commonly known as a wireless mesh network. This thesis focuses on the comparison and analysis of two representative drone swarms communication techniques to solve the challenges of drone swarms communication design.