Connectivity versus Area Coverage in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Networks

We investigate the area coverage and connectivity of an autonomous, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) network, whose goal is to monitor and sense a given area of interest in an efficient manner. To this end, we propose a connectivity-based mobility model that aims to sustain connectivity between the UAVs and the ground station. We compare coverage and connectivity performance of the proposed scheme with a coverage-based mobility scheme in several scenarios. Results illustrate the trade-off between achieving good spatial coverage and staying connected.