A Novel Architectural Design for Solving Lost-Link Problems in UAV Collaboration

Abstract

Research in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has gained attention from various communities because of their potential usage in improving safety and efficiency in different applications. An UAV has shown promising results in dangerous conditions such as forest fires, search and rescue, medical deliveries, wildlife monitoring and geophysical scanning. Some external conditions like slow or no internet connection areas such as rural, farm, forest, ocean, etc. may affect the performance of the UAVs. These conditions can be considered as lost-link problems. Several approaches have been conducted to resolve such issues by implementing robust on-board architecture, machine learning approaches and developing knowledge based reasoning systems. However, much of software architecture research has concentrated on UAV implementation in normal network condition. Thus, we propose a model for considering lost-link problems in software architecture. In this paper, we describe two interconnected architectures for client and server. The UAV as a client is controlled by microkernel based architecture and the server is developed using microservice architecture. Both of them are connected using a synchronizer component to collect, filter, analyze, predict, and mitigate an UAV when a lost-link problem occurs. Therefore, the UAV can still find an appropriate action to complete a mission as far as the sensor and actuator are not in a critical condition. Experiment results show that our approach yields high percentage of mission accomplishment, fault tolerance and performance in a lost-link situation.