Leveraging Antenna Orientation to Optimize Network Performance of Fleets of UAVs

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we investigate the problem of optimizing the network performance of a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in static positions. More precisely, we allow each UAV to change its orientation in order to improve the quality of communication with its neighbours. This form of controlled mobility takes advantage of the effective radiation pattern of each UAV. We build a decentralized scheme based on the hill climbing optimization approach without a priori knowledge of the antennas radiation patterns. Then, we propose a simulation framework, based on ns--3, allowing to evaluate the gain in network performance. We provide results in several deployment scenarios involving different rate adaptation algorithms and network sizes.