Mission Time Minimization for Multi-UAV-Enabled Wireless Powered Data Collection Systems

A multi-unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled wireless powered data collection system is investigated. More particularly, multiple rotary-wing UAVs are dispatched to collect data and broadcast wireless power to ground sensor nodes (SNs) simultaneously. Based on this setup, a mission completion time minimization problem is formulated by jointly optimizing the trajectory of UAVs and the time scheduling between UAVs and SNs, subject to both the UAVs data collection and the SNs energy harvesting constraints. To solve this challenging mixed integer non-convex optimization problem (MINCOP), a bisection search based alternating optimization (AO) algorithm is proposed, where the subproblems are alternately solved for a given time coefficient. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed multi-UAV collaboration scheme achieves a significant mission time reduction compared to other benchmark schemes.