Energy-Aware Trajectory Planning for the Localization of Mobile Devices Using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) represent an appealing technology that open new possibilities in civil use. Despite the promising convenience, UAVs face several major setbacks which include limited energy supply and short operation time. With focus on a specific application, localization of mobile devices using wireless communication, this work analyses those aspects of the localization process which cause energy and time sinks. Furthermore, by using the concept of Bezier curves, energy-aware trajectories are developed by generating path smoothing algorithms called Exterior Modification of Trajectory Algorithm (E-MoTA) and Interior Modification of Trajectory Algorithm (I-MoTA) which are applied to the static trajectories. The observation of the impact of these algorithms on the energy and time expenditures at various resolution and on the level of localization accuracy is analyzed. Several state-of-the-art trajectories are compared with E-MoTA and I-MoTA using analytical studies. The results show that applying MoTA aids in reducing energy and time expenditures while maintaining the level of the localization accuracy close to the original one.