Duration-aware Data Collection in UAV-aided Mobile Sensor Networks

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-aided Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) has been received increasing attentions in recent years due to its tremendous applications in many fields. The high dynamic topology in such network brings new communication challenges. In this paper, we address on the dynamic parameters, including the velocity and flying height of the UAV, the sensors velocities, and its real-time location, which affect the topology and influence the communication performance of the system. We introduce the contact-duration to mathematically integrate these parameters and to measure the transmission opportunity between the mobile node and the UAV and formulate the data collection issue as an optimization problem with the objectives of jointly maximizing the number of collected packets and the number of nodes that participate the communications with the UAV. Furthermore, we propose an opportunity-optimal frame selection algorithm, named as OFS algorithm, to increase the communication opportunities of the nodes, thereby, the data collection performance of the network was enhanced. Through extensive simulations based on simulated movement and real experiments, we evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed mechanisms under different configurations. The results present that the proposed mechanisms perform well on enhancing the transmission opportunity of the mobile nodes and the data collection performance of the network.