Distributed Time Slot Allocation For Transmission of Sensor Data in UAV Formations

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in multi-UAV systems rely on sensor data to achieve a collective goal, and for command and control. This paper presents Distributed Assignment and Resolution of Time slots (D-ART), a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA)-based Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol that supports the dissemination of safety-critical sensor data between UAVs in a formation. D-ART allows for each UAV to self-organize their time slot allocation, and has provisions for UAV-driven changes to the superframe size as necessary. We determine the best settings and evaluate the performance of D-ART using time to convergence as a key performance measure, as time to convergence directly corresponds to the time taken to generate the smallest possible TDMA schedule for a formation of unknown size.