Flying Path Optimization of Rechargeable UAV for Data Collection in Wireless Sensor Networks

In this letter, we study a novel framework to realize efficient data collection from wireless sensor networks, where an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is dispatched to collect the aggregated data from cluster heads and an unmanned ground vehicle carrying backup batteries moves along with the UAV to compensate for the shortage of UAV energy. Our optimization task is to minimize the mission time of a complete round of data collection, which is formulated as a coordinated traveling salesman problem with battery constraints and is solved by a heuristic path planning algorithm. Numerical results show that our proposal outperforms compared methods under appropriate configuration.