Using multiple unmanned aerial vehicles to maintain continuous reliable cooperative communication in target tracking

Because of the communication and measurement constraints, when performing persistent target tracking, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) require a reliable airborne communication relay established by other UAVs to communicate with the base station. For the purpose of forming the initial airborne communication relay chain, a novel method for cooperative path planning is proposed to ensure simultaneous arrival of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with initial and terminal course angle constraints, which is realized by adopting the minimum turning radius of Dubins curves and appropriately adjusting the course angle. For the random moving target, establishing continuous reliable communication relay chain is implemented by using distributed nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC), considering the constraints of UAVs dynamics, communication constraints, collision avoidance and so on. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.