Experimental Study on Delay/Disruption Tolerant Network (DTN) in the Sky -Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS)-Aided Communication Networks

摘要

Unmanned Aircrafts Systems (UAS) equipped with communication payloads can become a promising solution to provide network connectivity from the sky, especially when network infrastructure is totally damaged by disasters. However, the system with an Unmanned Aircraft (UA) can cover only a very small area. In order to expand the coverage and connect isolated fields, multiple UAs need to cooperatively construct a network by establishing communication links between each other. Since the location and trajectory of each UA are varied due to the effect of wind, the link between any pair of UAs is likely to be unstable. To cope with sudden link disruptions and/or changing link quality, Delay/Disruption Tolerant Network (DTN) technology is necessary for UAs as well as terrestrial terminals. In this paper, we introduce the concept of an UA Network consisting of multiple UAs and terrestrial terminals. In the field experiments, we utilized Relay-by-Smartphone employing two different network construction mechanisms, i.e., Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANET) and DTN, as a communication payload installed on each UA. This work was conducted under the national project, Research and Development on Cooperative Technologies and Frequency Sharing Between Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Based Wireless Relay Systems and Terrestrial Networks, supported by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), Japan.