A Novel Three-dimensional Mobility Model for mmWave UAV Swarms

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms are expected to become more prevalent in the Internet of Things (IoT) applications such as remote sensing, monitoring, entertainment, etc. The onboard sensors on these UAVs often generate massive data and demand higher data rates for real-time communication to the swarm gateway. The next-generation millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication technologies, such as IEEE 802.11ad/ay, 5G, etc., offer promising speeds and can be suitable for intra-swarm communication. However, to take advantage of these faster speeds, the impact of swarm mobility on the performance of mm Wave communication technologies must be investigated using realistic mobility models. In this paper, we present a three-dimensional group mobility model for UAV swarms guided by the swarm gateway considering real-world restrictions such as obtaining collision-free waypoints for the UAVs while residing within the coverage range of the gateway and maintaining a safe distance from peers. The performance analysis shows that the proposed model offers a superior degree of spatial and temporal dependency in the swarm movement than the existing state-of-the-art models.