Performance Analysis of UAV‐Enabled Disaster Recovery Networks

Earthquakes, cyclones, storms, tsunamis, and floods are natural disasters that destroy an area on a very large scale. All the city infrastructure falls apart during disaster incidents, resulting in deaths and leaving many victims. It is very important to keep updated information over such areas of chaos, to provide rescue and safety to the victims. Previously, different networks were used for communication to provide services over such affected areas. Self‐organized aerial devices named unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are remotely administered via wireless communication links. These are also known as drones, swarms, or flying robots (FR). These flying devices are prepared from the hardware of sensors and tags, software of processors, and wireless connectivity links. UAV networks have the benefits of high mobility, speedy response, easy infrastructure deployment, flexible configuration, and low maintenance. These can be used for the smooth environment of agriculture surveillance, as well as for dangerous environments of disaster or accidental or nuclear plant surveillance. UAVs provide benefits in many sectors, namely 3D mapping, military, monitoring, public education, healthcare, transportation, agriculture, environment investigation, and emergencies. Owing to the constraint of energy consumption and coverage range, UAVs have limited functionality. A multi‐UAV (cooperative and layered) system, which gives more benefits over a single UAV system, provides the solutions for energy and coverage range issues while single‐UAV systems provide solutions for human beings. Their capability is less than that of the multi‐UAV system, and they have to communicate only with one ground node. In this chapter, first, we discuss the factors that have effects on the performance of a UAV‐enabled disaster recovery network. Afterward, we have summarized previous researchers' contributions related to the performance of UAV for different types of networks. The chapter is concluded with some open future directions as well.