Leader-follower based Coalition Formation in Large-scale UAV Networks, A Quantum Evolutionary Approach

The problem of decentralized multiple Point of Interests (PoIs) detection and associated task completion in an unknown environment with multiple resource-constrained and self-interested Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is studied. The UAVs form several coalitions to efficiently complete the compound tasks which are impossible to be performed individually. The objectives of such coalition formation are to firstly minimize resource consumption in completing the encountered tasks on time, secondly to enhance the reliability of the coalitions, and lastly in segregating the most trusted UAVs amid the self interested of them. As many previous publications have merely focused upon minimizing costs, this study considers a multi-objective optimization coalition formation problem that considers the three aforementioned objectives. In doing so, a leader-follower-inspired coalition formation algorithm amalgamating the three objectives to address the problem of the computational complexity of coalition formation in large-scale UAV networks is proposed. This algorithm attempts to form the coalitions with minimally exceeding the required resources for the encountered tasks while maximizing the number of completed tasks. The proposed algorithm is based on Quantum Evolutionary Algorithms (QEA) which are a combination of quantum computing and evolutionary algorithms. Results from simulations show that the proposed algorithm significantly outperforms the existing coalition formation algorithms such as merge-and-split and a famous multi-objective genetic algorithm called NSGA-II (1).