Improving Pheromone Communication for UAV Swarm Mobility Management

In this article we address the optimisation of pheromone communication used for the mobility management of a swarm of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for surveillance applications. A genetic algorithm is proposed to optimise the exchange of pheromone maps used in the CACOC (Chaotic Ant Colony Optimisation for Coverage) mobility model which improves the vehicles’ routes in order to achieve unpredictable trajectories as well as maximise area coverage. Experiments are conducted using realistic simulations, which additionally permit to assess the impact of packet loss ratios on the performance of the surveillance system, in terms of reliability and area coverage.