Path- and data transmission planning for cooperating UAVs in delay tolerant network

The topic of this paper is coarse offline path planning for cooperating Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), and is motivated by applications such as surveillance of power lines and railways, inspection of gas pipes, and topological surveying to support the planning of new road routes. Such applications typically require a vast amount of data to be transmitted to a control center for analysis. We define a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) optimization problem in order to solve a surveillance mission using multiple UAVs, and to effectively transmit the data back to the base station we allow for ferrying and relaying, in addition to direct transmission. The paths obtained by solving the optimization problem are analyzed using a realistic radio propagation path loss simulator. If the radio propagation path loss exceeds the maximum design criterion the optimization problem is solved again with stricter communication constraints, and the procedure is continued in an iterative manner until the criterion is met.