Design space exploration of drone infrastructure for large-scale delivery services

Drones, also referred to as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are recently expanding their field of usage beyond military surveillance and tactical applications. Commercial drone delivery service is one of the promising applications in the near future, and a number of companies are already pushing forward the legal and technical barriers to realize the concept. Unlike conventional applications of drones, the success of a commercial application depends critically on the profitability. The major sources of expense are the electricity cost and battery purchasing cost due to aging. Hence, it is crucial to maximize the energy efficiency and mitigate battery aging of the drone delivery business. However, no prior work has extensively assessed the problem for the business as a whole. This paper, for the first time, proposes a holistic and detailed analysis on the profitability and time to delivery of the drone delivery business. This paper identifies the major design parameters and runtime management potentials that affect the profitability and time to delivery of the business. We have implemented a discrete event simulator based on detailed models of the comprising components. We perform a design space exploration to understand the effects of the various battery configurations, battery attachment technique, drone flight speed, etc., on time to delivery, electricity cost, and battery purchasing cost. Our results show that such control knobs have a significant impact on the time to delivery and the operating cost of the business.