UAV deployment model in aerial monitoring applications using camera field of view

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have advanced to the point where they can now be used for surveillance, delivery, agricultural, communication range expansion, and firefighting. Quality, capacity, robustness, energy efficiency, and reliability are all important factors in such deployments. Because UAVs have constraints in terms of communication range, storage, onboard power, and RF resources, their performance in ad-hoc networks suffers. Furthermore, due to the general structure of UAVs and deployment environments, path planning of the UAV while executing tasks assigned by a ground control station (GCS) is a challenging task. For surveillance missions, this paper provides a UAV-assisted communication model based on grid-based area decomposition and lawnmower-scanning approach. While designing the UAV trajectory, the area decomposition, height of the UAV, and path planning are chosen based on the UAV camera field of view (FoV), image aspect ratio, and communication quality. Deriving mathematical expressions is used to characterize the area and energy consumption. For the urban setting, a statistical propagation model is discussed to estimate path loss (PL), probability of bit-error-rate (BER), probability of line of sight (PLoS), and probability of system outage (Pout). The impact of various deployment settings on system performance is shown in numerical and simulation findings. The network designer can choose appropriate system resources using the analytical results of this work and by optimizing various parameters.