Coordinated maritime missions of unmanned vehicles — Network architecture and performance analysis

Abstract

Abstract-Multi-vehicle operations using various types of unmanned vehicles (UVs) can increase efficiency of marine data acquisition, reduce the crew risk and lower mission costs. These types of missions are very complex and often involve systems that are not interoperable. From an operational perspective however, some level of integration is necessary. Typically, a common network system architecture and Situation Awareness (SA) platform are required. The architecture allows operators to transfer data between vehicles and their operators, while the SA platform allows to monitor mission progress and react to changes. This paper presents a network system architecture used during an experiment realized in Spring 2016 in Norway. 8 departments from 5 institutions worked together to combine operation of 4 UVs (aerial, surface, underwater), a support vessel and onshore team. The description is followed by a backbone network performance analysis. Several cases are presented, with focus on a transmission between manned vessel and Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV), including direct connection, and data-relay mechanism via Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV).

Robust Cellular Communications for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Maritime Search and Rescue

“…While these land-based operations mainly rely on rotorcraft, existing works aiming at maritime deployment mainly utilize fixed-wing platforms. Furthermore, Zolich et al describe a system architecture and present experimental results for long-range UAV operations at sea [12]. These works utilize WiFi or proprietary communications solutions.…”

Optimal Placement of UAV for Coverage Maximization with Minimum Path Loss

“…That review demonstrates that there are two primary proliferation categories, comparing to receiver with LoS associations and to those with NLoS network that can in any case get the transmitted signal because of solid reflections. The likelihood of establishing a LOS link among a transceiver and a recipient is a vital element, demonstration of these pathways is defined as [13], [14] where α and β are continual quantities relying upon the environmental conditions where tilt angle (θ) equivalent to tan -1 (h/r), altitude of an UAV's BS and its separation from receiving devices is represented by h and r, respectively without considering impact of shadowing; then again, the regular Path loss is exhibited in a probabilistic way as mention in [9].…”

Path Planning of Multi-UAS Communication Relay by Decentralized MPC

“…) 2 (20) and P t is the transmitted power, λ is the wavelength, D i,i+1 (x i , x i+1 ) is the directivity gain with respect to the position and antenna angle of the ith and (i + 1)th nodes, and…”