Initial evaluation of an IEEE 802.11s-based mobile ad-hoc network for collaborative Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

The purpose of this research was to develop a reconfigurable network architecture for collaborative Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) based on a mesh networking standard called IEEE 802.11s. A low-cost, small form-factor, IEEE 802.11a based wireless modem was selected and integrated with the existing Flight Control System developed at Virginia Commonwealth University UAV Laboratory. A self-configurable user-space application was developed that can provide support and functionality to collaborative algorithms. The reconfigurability of the IEEE 802.11s mesh network was validated and evaluated by conducting real-world flights using two UAV nodes and one ground node. The results show that the IEEE 802.11s is a promising solution for collaborative UAV applications.