Connectivity Management in Drone Networks

Abstract

Drone technologies have attracted the attention of many researchers in recent years due to their potential opportunities. Fleets of drones integrated with widely available relatively short-range communication technologies have various application areas such as wildlife monitoring, disaster relief, and military surveillance. One of the major problems in this manner is maintaining the connectivity of the drone network. In this chapter, the authors study the connectivity management issues in drone networks. Firstly, movement, communication, and channel models are described by the authors, along with the problem definition. The hardness of the problem is investigated by proving its NP-Hardness. Various algorithms proposed to solve the connectivity management problem and their variants are evaluated in detail. Lastly, for future directions, the authors present mathematical methods to solve the emerging problem in drone networks.