A discrete stochastic process for coverage analysis of autonomous UAV networks

Abstract

Networked unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have found an increasing number of applications in recent years. In this work, we provide an analytical method to evaluate the sensor coverage performance of a UAV network, where the individual UAVs can work independently or cooperatively to achieve a common goal. More specifically, we propose a stochastic model in terms of a Markov chain including approximations for its parameters. Studying several scenarios using the Markov chain as well as simulations, we investigate the impact of network size and area size on the achieved coverage. While the Markovbased analysis is an approximation, the results are still in good agreement with the simulations.