Multicast collaborative beamforming from airborne wireless sensor network

Recent advancements in low power micro sensors and wireless network technology have enabled a host of new sensor network applications. One such application is to perform multicast collaborative beamforming from a stationary airborne wireless sensor network. Such a network will be able to broadcast a signal to multiple distributed receivers simultaneously. Collaborative beamforming from such a network can also be an effective means of communication from an unobstructed vantage point. This paper explores the feasibility of such a network. We analyze the beam pattern fluctuations due to position errors from unsteady node station keeping. We show that the effects of minor position errors are manageable. Finally, a node repositioning based non-linear constrained optimization technique for multicast collaborative beamforming is introduced.