Collaborative Communication in Multi-robot Surveillance Based on Indoor Radio Mapping

This paper considers a scenario where multiple sensing robots are deployed to monitor the indoor environments, and transmit the monitored data to the base station. In order to ensure favorable surveillance quality, we aim at achieving a high throughput for the multi-robot system. We firstly establish the stochastic wireless channel model and derive the expression of the throughput. Then, we propose the non-collaborative and collaborative communication strategies, both adopting the joint frequency-rate adaptation based on the stochastic channel model. The experimental results have shown that the throughput can be largely improved with the collaboration between robots. Furthermore, considering our surveillance scenario is approximate time-invariant (ATI), we propose the joint frequency-rate communication strategies based on proactive channel measurements, and the effectiveness of the strategies is validated by experimental results.