Aviation time minimization of UAV for data collection from energy constrained sensor networks

Abstract

In this paper, we study the problem of data collection by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) from a set of sensors located on a straight line. The objective is to minimize the UAV's total aviation time while allowing each of the sensors to successfully upload a certain amount of data using a given amount of energy. The whole trajectory is divided into non-overlapping intervals, in each of which one sensor is served by the UAV. The division of the intervals, the UAV speed and the sensors' power allocation policy are sequentially optimized. We show that the optimal power allocation follows the classical water-filling policy, the optimal UAV speed can be obtained by bisection search, and the optimal division of the intervals can be determined by employing the dynamic programming (DP) approach. Numerical results show that for a single sensor case, the optimal transmission interval is symmetric over the location of the sensor. For multiple sensors, the optimal UAV speed is proportional to the given energy and inversely proportional to the data upload requirement.