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Trajectory Planning for Communication Relay Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Urban Dynamic Environments

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Abstract

This paper proposes an optimal positioning and trajectory planning algorithm for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to improve a communication quality of a team of ground mobile nodes (vehicles) in a complex urban environment. In particular, a nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC)-based approach is proposed to find an efficient trajectory for UAVs with a discrete genetic algorithm while considering the dynamic constraints of fixed-wing UAVs. The advantages of using the proposed NMPC approach and the communication performance metrics are investigated through a number of scenarios with different horizon steps in the NMPC framework, the number of UAVs used, heading rates and speeds.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering, Loughborough University, Loughborough, LE11 3TU, UK

    Pawel Ladosz & Wen-Hua Chen

  2. School of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science Technology (UNIST), Ulsan, Republic of Korea

    Hyondong Oh

Authors
  1. Pawel Ladosz
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  2. Hyondong Oh
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  3. Wen-Hua Chen
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Correspondence to Hyondong Oh.

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Ladosz, P., Oh, H. & Chen, WH. Trajectory Planning for Communication Relay Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Urban Dynamic Environments. J Intell Robot Syst 89, 7–25 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-017-0484-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-017-0484-y

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