Experimental analysis of Wi-Fi-based remote control of UAVs with concurrent mission traffic

Abstract

Communicating UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) are promising in terms of applications, but require to address numerous research issues. In this paper, we study the impact of the quality of Wi-Fi communications on the behavior of remotely controlled UAVs. To this end, we design an experimental platform composed of PX4 Vision UAVs, a Motion Capture system, and a tool to generate mission traffic from the ground station. By defining different scenarios and different traffic configurations, we conduct a set of experiments. This allows us to analyze how the presence of mission traffic impacts the stability of the reception of the control traffic, and how, in turn, it impacts the behavior of the UAVs.