Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Wireless Sensor Networks: Automated Sensor Deployment and Mobile Sink Nodes

This paper describes the design and implementation of a heterogeneous multi-agent system consisting of a wireless sensor network and a mobile agent (UAV) for automatic network deployment and data collection beyond the communication range of individual sensors in the network. A UAV is able to transport and release sensors at specific locations that might be dangerous or inaccessible to humans. The network can be deployed fast when manual placement is a risk. The measured data is likewise automatically collected by a UAV following an optimal route obtained by solving the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) that covers all sensor locations. Since the route of the UAV is pre-planned, sensor nodes are able to turn on the radio interface exactly when the UAV is close by and thus save energy. More precisely, the power consumption of the sensor node is improved in two ways: (i) multihop routing is not required, which saves battery life in sensors, and (ii) the transmission power can be reduced because the UAV is able to go near the sensor. The whole system was tested in an outdoor experiment showing promising results.