An adaptive, balanced and energy efficient clustering mechanism for UAV networks

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are widely used in many fields, both civilian and military. Mostly mini UAVs are used in civilian applications which are preferred both in terms of affordability and availability. However, these vehicles are insufficient for some applications when they are used alone. This inadequacy is often observed in mini-UAVs having limited capacity in terms of energy storage and payloads. As a solution to this challenge, swarms of networked mini UAVs have been proposed. Thus, the UAVs in such networks are assigned with different tasks to accomplish the overall mission. While such UAV networks have many advantages, they also come with challenges. These challenges include limited on-board energy storage, low power and lossy wireless communication interface, and limited useful payload carrying capability. In this study, a new adaptive, balanced and energy efficient clustering mechanism has been proposed for such UAV networks.

Keywords

• unmanned aerial vehicles network
• cluster head selection
• wireless sensor networks
• energy efficiency
• topology stability
• i̇nsansız hava araçları ağı
• küme başı seçimi
• kablosuz algılayıcı ağlar
• enerji verimliliği
• topoloji kararlılığı