Drones path planning for WSN data gathering: A column generation heuristic approach

In this paper, we investigate the use of a swarm of drones as mobile data gathering sinks for scattered wireless sensors over large areas. Precisely, we address the path planning issue with the objective of minimizing the drones' travel duration. Several criteria are also considered, such as: 1...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Garraffa, Michele, Bekhti, Mustapha, Letocart, Lucas, Achir, Nadjib, Boussetta, Khaled
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Subjects:
Base stations
Collision avoidance
Drones
Path planning
Sensors
Wireless communication
Wireless sensor networks
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Summary:In this paper, we investigate the use of a swarm of drones as mobile data gathering sinks for scattered wireless sensors over large areas. Precisely, we address the path planning issue with the objective of minimizing the drones' travel duration. Several criteria are also considered, such as: 1) energy autonomy of the drones, 2) a good fairness regarding route lengths, 3) collision avoidance and 4) drones' tracking enabled by the transmission of their positions to terrestrial base stations. These base stations, and consequently the drones' paths, must be carefully determined in the aim to statistically guarantee a minimum threshold on the delivery ratio of drones' position packets. The problem is formalized as a multiple Traveling Salesman problem, which is known to be NP-Hard. To cope with the computational complexity that rises for realistic parameters, we propose a heuristic approach based on a column generation approach.
ISSN:1558-2612
DOI:10.1109/WCNC.2018.8377391