Establishing Obstacle and Collision Free Communication Relay for UAVs with Artificial Potential Fields

In this paper, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are used for establishing an airborne communication relay chain to extend the communication range or to obtain a channel between two far points which are outside the single UAV communication range. Positions of the UAVs in the chain are detected by the vehicles autonomously and while establishing the suitable formation, collision avoidance between vehicles and other geographical obstacles are considered by using artificial potential fields. Especially to provide reliable continues communication between vehicles as uninterrupted channels, positions of the UAVs which are providing line of sight, calculated automatically by tuning artificial potential field parameters dynamically. The success of this novel approach is expressed by simulation studies in Matlab environment and the simulation results are validated using NS2 simulator.