Route Optimisation for Maximum Air to Ground Channel Quality

Abstract

Advanced means of transportation such as flying vehicles provide as many possibilities as challenges to be solved before they reach the sky. One of the challenges is to improve air to ground communications. Maximizing the received power and availability results in a better air to ground link. The trajectory of the flying vehicle influences the performance of this communication link. Our contribution to the field is to propose a path planner based on evolutionary algorithms with the improvement of the air to ground channel quality as one of the objectives. The path planner efficiently explores the search space and proposes a trajectory that fulfils objectives such as; maximum air to ground channel quality, availability, and minimum flight time, among others. The path planner is tested in different situations. These situations include different terrain conditions for different channel behaviours. With the aim of testing other optimisation objectives, elements such as no fly zones are included.

Keywords

• Aerial robotics
• multiobjective evolutionary algorithms (EAs)
• path planning
• channel model
• wireless communications