On the Energy Constrained Data Collection in Multi-UAV-enabled Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, we studied the energy constrained path planning of the multiple unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) based data collection from massive energy constrained ground sensors to fulfill the remote monitoring of large area. In order to prolong the lifetime of all deployed ground sensors, UAVs are assumed to fly from a given starting point to traverse all sensor node till they arrive at a predefined destination location to offload the collected data for processing. With these constraints we formulate the multi-UAV trajectory optimization problem subject to energy consumption constraint by every UAV and show that it is a multiple traveling salesman problem (mTSP) problem. In order to simplify the analysis, node partitioning strategy was presented to simplify the mTSP problem into conventional TSP problem. Our analysis unveils that, the proposed node partitioning strategy provides us an efficient analysis framework to fulfill the data collection job with balanced flight distance by every single UAV, regardless of whether the balanced load requirement presents or not.