Hybrid control of long endurance unmanned aerial vehicles for robust wireless communication networking

This paper presents an effective hybrid control approach for building stable wireless sensor networks between heterogeneous unmanned vehicles using high endurance aerial vehicles. For optimal deployment of the aerial vehicles in communication networks, a gradient descent based self-estimating control algorithm is utilized to locate the aerial platforms to maintain maximum communication throughputs between distributed multiple nodes. The autonomous aerial robots, which function as communication relay nodes, harness thermal energy from the atmosphere to improve their flight endurance within specified communication coverage areas. The rapidly-deployable communication networks with the high-endurance aerial vehicles can be used for various application areas including environment monitoring, surveillance, tracking, and decision-making support. Flight test and simulation studies are conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed hybrid control technique for robust communication networks.