Clustering-based Communication Backbone for Large Scale UAV Networks

Single micro UAV is limited by its endurance and suffers the problem of single point failure. An autonomous fleet of cooperating UAVs can render more efficient and robust ability to complete the missions. In order to make multiple UAVs fly cooperatively in an autonomous way without control from the ground station, one of the key techniques is communication network technology. In this paper, we propose a distributed algorithm to construct a clustered-backbone to support both broadcast and unicast communications for UAV networks. In our algorithm, UAVs clustering and virtual backbone construction only need the information exchange among adjacent UAVs. We also propose a strategy to dynamically maintain this clustered-backbone network. We test our scheme using four commercial UAVs enhanced by an ARM-based embedded computer to demonstrate the distributed control and dynamic maintenance features of the algorithm.