Communication-aware trajectory planning for unmanned aerial vehicles in urban environments

Introduction: Maintaining communication among mobile agents in a networked team is challenging due to limited bandwidth, maximum communication range, transmission power, and physical obscuration or occlusion in the mission environment. With the advent of lightweight, robust, and autonomous platforms as well as wireless networking technologies, it becomes feasible to use small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as communication relay nodes under limited satellite communication environments [1]. This communication relay UAV could allow a ground operator/system to have a sufficient data link to effectively see beyond the communication range and over the horizon/buildings where traditional methods fail. The relay UAV can also be used to transmit/share critical information efficiently from an operator to an end user or between vehicles.