Sensor tasking for unmanned aerial vehicles in disaster management missions with limited communications bandwidth

• Published in: Computers & industrial engineering 2020-11, Vol.149, p.106754, Article 106754
• Main Authors: Worden, McKenzie R., Murray, Chase C., Karwan, Mark H., Ortiz-Peña, Héctor J., Nagi, Rakesh
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bandwidth; Disaster management; Network communication; Sensor scheduling; Sensor tasking; Unmanned aerial vehicle
• ISSN: 0360-8352; 1879-0550
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cie.2020.106754

This research considers the problem of maximizing information collection and exchange between unmanned resources and a control station in a bandwidth constrained environment. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are utilized in disaster response to gather data and aid in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). They are regularly equipped with multiple gimbal-mounted heterogeneous sensors, generating large amounts of data which are to be routed through a communications network back to mission managers. A mixed integer linear program (MILP) is formulated for this problem. However, due to the complexity of this problem, the MILP is only able to solve trivially-sized problems. A three-phase heuristic approach is proposed which, through extensive testing, is proven to efficiently solve large-sized problems. Our analysis also gives insight into the features of this problem and their impact on mission success. •Defined a bandwidth-constrained sensor tasking problem for unmanned aerial vehicles.•Developed a mixed integer linear program and a heuristic approach to solve problem.•Heuristic approach outperforms math model in large and complex instances.•Analysis indicates that sensors with large fields-of-regard provide the most benefit.