Decentralized extremum-seeking control of nonholonomic vehicles to form a communication chain

Electronic chaining is the formation of a linked communication chain that maximizes the end-to-end throughput using a cooperative team of mobile vehicles in an unknown, dynamic environment. A decentralized extremum seeking (ES) controller, which is an adaptive model free controller, is presented to control the locations of the mobile communication relays based on received signal strength, as opposed to relative position. A communication chain that seeks to maximize a link performance metric such as bandwidth or end-to-end delay does not necessarily form a linear, evenly spaced formation of the nodes when jamming and environmental terrain factors are considered. This chapter presents an ES controller that has been specifically designed for use with teams of unmanned aircraft using a Lyapunov guidance vector field controller and in particular focuses on the performance and stability of the ES algorithm due to the operational limits and constraints of an unmanned aircraft.