A Survey on Multi-unmanned Aerial Vehicle Communications for Autonomous Inspections

The system design of autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) poses several challenges for the wireless communication concerning performance, resiliency, and scalability. The UAV system is typically restricted by flying time limitations due to energy constraints and can benefit from coordination of tasks among UAVs. It may further profit from cooperation between UAVs to share information context, maintain flying formation, extend communication range etc. In this paper, we review communication schemes for clusters of autonomous UAVs cooperation. Performance metrics for assessing those schemes are investigated. We provide a survey of candidate wireless communication technologies considering a power line inspection target application. Performance measurements and UAV related channel modeling of those candidate technologies are reviewed. We present how the requirements of the UAVs communication system are identified through the application specification.