A UAV Flight Method for Non-Uniform User Distributions in Aerial Wireless Relay Networks

A wireless relay network using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to deliver messages, such as damage reports and safety confirmation, in wide areas affected by large-scale disasters is proposed. In this system, UAVs move autonomously following a predetermined flight method and deliver a message in a delay-tolerant manner by transmitting it hop by hop to other UAVs within the communication range. In this study, we propose a UAV flight method for non-uniform-user-distribution environments. The proposed method is based on coverage control and utilizes the Voronoi cell with a density function. We considered cases where the user distribution was available in advance and also where it was not. Simulation results showed that the proposed method could improve effectiveness in terms of average message delivery delay, especially when the user distribution was considerably non-uniform.