Desired minimum energy trajectories for private UAV networks

Private UAV networks have been introduced to be used in applications where all UAVs belong to one organization or a person. Private UAV networks enjoy the advantage that the tasks can be accomplished with a small number of UAVs compared to Flying Ad hoc Networks (FANETs) and Internet of Drones (IoDs). Since the private UAV networks have a star-connected relay topology, routing messages through them is straightforward. Unlike in FANETs where there can be many neighbors, the movements of UAV nodes should be controlled in private UAV networks in such a way that each UAV node has a neighbor at all times that is connected to the Ground Station (GS). The control of the movement of nodes is not a difficult task but if the energy consumption of UAV nodes has to be minimized, it becomes a significant problem. In this paper, we propose a simple approach to control the desired trajectories of all UAV nodes, when the leading UAV node receives a command to move to a target location. Our method minimizes the total battery energy consumed by all UAVs. We have shown via simulations that the new method works as expected in the presence of known obstacles as well