Distributed cooperative control for deployment and task allocation of unmanned aerial vehicle networks

In this study, the authors consider the deployment of unmanned aerial vehicle networks for task accomplishment within a closed region. Each agent with limited sensing range and communication range needs to take charge of the task accomplishment within a part of the whole region. The main objective is to optimise the deployment of the agents such that the maximum travelling time the agents take to reach a place within the surveillance region is minimised. The deployment issue is formulated as the worst-case disc-covering problem and a distributed cooperative control strategy is designed for agents with limited mobility. It is proven that by the proposed control strategy the network configuration converges to a local optimum configuration. Moreover, a combined optimisation approach is developed to improve the performance by optimising the initial configuration. To guarantee the proper working of the designed control strategy and K-connectivity of the network, a distributed topology control scheme is proposed. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy is testified by simulation.