Unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)are widely used in situations with uncertain and risky areas lacking network coverage.In natural disasters,timely delivery of first aid supplies is crucial.Current UAVs face risks such as...Unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)are widely used in situations with uncertain and risky areas lacking network coverage.In natural disasters,timely delivery of first aid supplies is crucial.Current UAVs face risks such as crashing into birds or unexpected structures.Airdrop systems with parachutes risk dispersing payloads away from target locations.The objective here is to use multiple UAVs to distribute payloads cooperatively to assigned locations.The civil defense department must balance coverage,accurate landing,and flight safety while considering battery power and capability.Deep Q-network(DQN)models are commonly used in multi-UAV path planning to effectively represent the surroundings and action spaces.Earlier strategies focused on advanced DQNs for UAV path planning in different configurations,but rarely addressed non-cooperative scenarios and disaster environments.This paper introduces a new DQN framework to tackle challenges in disaster environments.It considers unforeseen structures and birds that could cause UAV crashes and assumes urgent landing zones and winch-based airdrop systems for precise delivery and return.A new DQN model is developed,which incorporates the battery life,safe flying distance between UAVs,and remaining delivery points to encode surrounding hazards into the state space and Q-networks.Additionally,a unique reward system is created to improve UAV action sequences for better delivery coverage and safe landings.The experimental results demonstrate that multi-UAV first aid delivery in disaster environments can achieve advanced performance.展开更多
With the rapid development of low-altitude economy and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) deployment technology, aerial-ground collaborative delivery (AGCD) is emerging as a novel mode of last-mile delivery, where the ve...With the rapid development of low-altitude economy and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) deployment technology, aerial-ground collaborative delivery (AGCD) is emerging as a novel mode of last-mile delivery, where the vehicle and its onboard UAVs are utilized efficiently. Vehicles not only provide delivery services to customers but also function as mobile ware-houses and launch/recovery platforms for UAVs. This paper addresses the vehicle routing problem with UAVs considering time window and UAV multi-delivery (VRPU-TW&MD). A mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model is developed to mini-mize delivery costs while incorporating constraints related to UAV energy consumption. Subsequently, a micro-evolution aug-mented large neighborhood search (MEALNS) algorithm incor-porating adaptive large neighborhood search (ALNS) and micro-evolution mechanism is proposed. Numerical experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of both the model and algorithm in solving the VRPU-TW&MD. The impact of key parameters on delivery performance is explored by sensitivity analysis.展开更多
The unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)-assisted mobile edge computing(MEC)has been deemed a promising solution for energy-constrained devices to run smart applications with computationintensive and latency-sensitive require...The unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)-assisted mobile edge computing(MEC)has been deemed a promising solution for energy-constrained devices to run smart applications with computationintensive and latency-sensitive requirements,especially in some infrastructure-limited areas or some emergency scenarios.However,the multi-UAVassisted MEC network remains largely unexplored.In this paper,the dynamic trajectory optimization and computation offloading are studied in a multi-UAVassisted MEC system where multiple UAVs fly over a target area with different trajectories to serve ground users.By considering the dynamic channel condition and random task arrival and jointly optimizing UAVs'trajectories,user association,and subchannel assignment,the average long-term sum of the user energy consumption minimization problem is formulated.To address the problem involving both discrete and continuous variables,a hybrid decision deep reinforcement learning(DRL)-based intelligent energyefficient resource allocation and trajectory optimization algorithm is proposed,named HDRT algorithm,where deep Q network(DQN)and deep deterministic policy gradient(DDPG)are invoked to process discrete and continuous variables,respectively.Simulation results show that the proposed HDRT algorithm converges fast and outperforms other benchmarks in the aspect of user energy consumption and latency.展开更多
Unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)have become one of the key technologies to achieve future data collection due to their high mobility,rapid deployment,low cost,and the ability to establish line-of-sight communication lin...Unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)have become one of the key technologies to achieve future data collection due to their high mobility,rapid deployment,low cost,and the ability to establish line-of-sight communication links.However,when UAV swarm perform tasks in narrow spaces,they often encounter various spatial obstacles,building shielding materials,and high-speed node movements,which result in intermittent network communication links and cannot support the smooth comple-tion of tasks.In this paper,a high mobility and dynamic topol-ogy of the UAV swarm is particularly considered and the high dynamic mobile topology-based clustering(HDMTC)algorithm is proposed.Simulation and real flight verification results verify that the proposed HDMTC algorithm achieves higher stability of net-work,longer link expiration time(LET),and longer node lifetime,all of which improve the communication performance for UAV swarm networks.展开更多
The environment of low-altitude urban airspace is complex and variable due to numerous obstacles,non-cooperative aircraft,and birds.Unmanned Aerial Vehicles(UAVs)leveraging environmental information to achieve three-d...The environment of low-altitude urban airspace is complex and variable due to numerous obstacles,non-cooperative aircraft,and birds.Unmanned Aerial Vehicles(UAVs)leveraging environmental information to achieve three-dimension collision-free trajectory planning is the prerequisite to ensure airspace security.However,the timely information of surrounding situation is difficult to acquire by UAVs,which further brings security risks.As a mature technology leveraged in traditional civil aviation,the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast(ADS-B)realizes continuous surveillance of the information of aircraft.Consequently,we leverage ADS-B for surveillance and information broadcasting,and divide the aerial airspace into multiple sub-airspaces to improve flight safety in UAV trajectory planning.In detail,we propose the secure Sub-airSpaces Planning(SSP)algorithm and Particle Swarm Optimization Rapidly-exploring Random Trees(PSO-RRT)algorithm for the UAV trajectory planning in law-altitude airspace.The performance of the proposed algorithm is verified by simulations and the results show that SSP reduces both the maximum number of UAVs in the sub-airspace and the length of the trajectory,and PSO-RRT reduces the cost of UAV trajectory in the sub-airspace.展开更多
This paper investigates the challenges associated with Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) collaborative search and target tracking in dynamic and unknown environments characterized by limited field of view. The primary obj...This paper investigates the challenges associated with Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) collaborative search and target tracking in dynamic and unknown environments characterized by limited field of view. The primary objective is to explore the unknown environments to locate and track targets effectively. To address this problem, we propose a novel Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) method based on Graph Neural Network (GNN). Firstly, a method is introduced for encoding continuous-space multi-UAV problem data into spatial graphs which establish essential relationships among agents, obstacles, and targets. Secondly, a Graph AttenTion network (GAT) model is presented, which focuses exclusively on adjacent nodes, learns attention weights adaptively and allows agents to better process information in dynamic environments. Reward functions are specifically designed to tackle exploration challenges in environments with sparse rewards. By introducing a framework that integrates centralized training and distributed execution, the advancement of models is facilitated. Simulation results show that the proposed method outperforms the existing MARL method in search rate and tracking performance with less collisions. The experiments show that the proposed method can be extended to applications with a larger number of agents, which provides a potential solution to the challenging problem of multi-UAV autonomous tracking in dynamic unknown environments.展开更多
Unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)imagery poses significant challenges for object detection due to extreme scale variations,high-density small targets(68%in VisDrone dataset),and complex backgrounds.While YOLO-series models...Unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)imagery poses significant challenges for object detection due to extreme scale variations,high-density small targets(68%in VisDrone dataset),and complex backgrounds.While YOLO-series models achieve speed-accuracy trade-offs via fixed convolution kernels and manual feature fusion,their rigid architectures struggle with multi-scale adaptability,as exemplified by YOLOv8n’s 36.4%mAP and 13.9%small-object AP on VisDrone2019.This paper presents YOLO-LE,a lightweight framework addressing these limitations through three novel designs:(1)We introduce the C2f-Dy and LDown modules to enhance the backbone’s sensitivity to small-object features while reducing backbone parameters,thereby improving model efficiency.(2)An adaptive feature fusion module is designed to dynamically integrate multi-scale feature maps,optimizing the neck structure,reducing neck complexity,and enhancing overall model performance.(3)We replace the original loss function with a distributed focal loss and incorporate a lightweight self-attention mechanism to improve small-object recognition and bounding box regression accuracy.Experimental results demonstrate that YOLO-LE achieves 39.9%mAP@0.5 on VisDrone2019,representing a 9.6%improvement over YOLOv8n,while maintaining 8.5 GFLOPs computational efficiency.This provides an efficient solution for UAV object detection in complex scenarios.展开更多
This paper presents a design method to implement an antenna array characterized by ultra-wide beam coverage,low profile,and low Sidelobe Level(SLL)for the application of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(UAV)air-to-ground commu...This paper presents a design method to implement an antenna array characterized by ultra-wide beam coverage,low profile,and low Sidelobe Level(SLL)for the application of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(UAV)air-to-ground communication.The array consists of ten broadside-radiating,ultrawide-beamwidth elements that are cascaded by a central-symmetry series-fed network with tapered currents following Dolph-Chebyshev distribution to provide low SLL.First,an innovative design of end-fire Huygens source antenna that is compatible with metal ground is presented.A low-profile,half-mode Microstrip Patch Antenna(MPA)is utilized to serve as the magnetic dipole and a monopole is utilized to serves as the electric dipole,constructing the compact,end-fire,grounded Huygens source antenna.Then,two opposite-oriented end-fire Huygens source antennas are seamlessly integrated into a single antenna element in the form of monopole-loaded MPA to accomplish the ultrawide,broadside-radiating beam.Particular consideration has been applied into the design of series-fed network as well as antenna element to compensate the adverse coupling effects between elements on the radiation performance.Experiment indicates an ultrawide Half-Power Beamwidth(HPBW)of 161°and a low SLL of-25 dB with a high gain of 12 d Bi under a single-layer configuration.The concurrent ultrawide beamwidth and low SLL make it particularly attractive for applications of UAV air-to-ground communication.展开更多
Effect web will be an important combat means to achieve accurate,efficient,agile and reliable destruction of enemy targets.The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles(UAV)cluster in warfare has become a key element in the bat...Effect web will be an important combat means to achieve accurate,efficient,agile and reliable destruction of enemy targets.The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles(UAV)cluster in warfare has become a key element in the battle for military superiority between nations.The construction of UAV cluster effect web is a kind of combinatorial optimization in essence.By selecting the optimal combination in the limited equipment concentration,the whole network can be optimized.Firstly,in order to improve the combinatorial optimization efficiency of UAV cluster effect web,NSGA-Ⅱbased on deep Q-network(DQN-based NSGA-Ⅱ)is proposed.This algorithm is used to solve the Multi-Objective Combinatorial Optimization(MOCO)problem in the construction of effect web.Secondly,a dynamic generation method is devised to solve the problem caused by the possible destruction of enemy and our node under the fierce confrontation between the two sides.Finally,the simulation results show that the DQN-based NSGA-Ⅱis better than the genetic algorithm with single operator.The comparison experiment shows that the weight of evaluation indexes will have a corresponding influence on the optimization results.展开更多
基金supported by the Committee of Science of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan under Grant No.249015/0224.
文摘Unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)are widely used in situations with uncertain and risky areas lacking network coverage.In natural disasters,timely delivery of first aid supplies is crucial.Current UAVs face risks such as crashing into birds or unexpected structures.Airdrop systems with parachutes risk dispersing payloads away from target locations.The objective here is to use multiple UAVs to distribute payloads cooperatively to assigned locations.The civil defense department must balance coverage,accurate landing,and flight safety while considering battery power and capability.Deep Q-network(DQN)models are commonly used in multi-UAV path planning to effectively represent the surroundings and action spaces.Earlier strategies focused on advanced DQNs for UAV path planning in different configurations,but rarely addressed non-cooperative scenarios and disaster environments.This paper introduces a new DQN framework to tackle challenges in disaster environments.It considers unforeseen structures and birds that could cause UAV crashes and assumes urgent landing zones and winch-based airdrop systems for precise delivery and return.A new DQN model is developed,which incorporates the battery life,safe flying distance between UAVs,and remaining delivery points to encode surrounding hazards into the state space and Q-networks.Additionally,a unique reward system is created to improve UAV action sequences for better delivery coverage and safe landings.The experimental results demonstrate that multi-UAV first aid delivery in disaster environments can achieve advanced performance.
基金supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities(2024JBZX038)the National Natural Science Foundation of China(62076023).
文摘With the rapid development of low-altitude economy and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) deployment technology, aerial-ground collaborative delivery (AGCD) is emerging as a novel mode of last-mile delivery, where the vehicle and its onboard UAVs are utilized efficiently. Vehicles not only provide delivery services to customers but also function as mobile ware-houses and launch/recovery platforms for UAVs. This paper addresses the vehicle routing problem with UAVs considering time window and UAV multi-delivery (VRPU-TW&MD). A mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model is developed to mini-mize delivery costs while incorporating constraints related to UAV energy consumption. Subsequently, a micro-evolution aug-mented large neighborhood search (MEALNS) algorithm incor-porating adaptive large neighborhood search (ALNS) and micro-evolution mechanism is proposed. Numerical experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of both the model and algorithm in solving the VRPU-TW&MD. The impact of key parameters on delivery performance is explored by sensitivity analysis.
基金supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.62471254)National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.92367302)。
文摘The unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)-assisted mobile edge computing(MEC)has been deemed a promising solution for energy-constrained devices to run smart applications with computationintensive and latency-sensitive requirements,especially in some infrastructure-limited areas or some emergency scenarios.However,the multi-UAVassisted MEC network remains largely unexplored.In this paper,the dynamic trajectory optimization and computation offloading are studied in a multi-UAVassisted MEC system where multiple UAVs fly over a target area with different trajectories to serve ground users.By considering the dynamic channel condition and random task arrival and jointly optimizing UAVs'trajectories,user association,and subchannel assignment,the average long-term sum of the user energy consumption minimization problem is formulated.To address the problem involving both discrete and continuous variables,a hybrid decision deep reinforcement learning(DRL)-based intelligent energyefficient resource allocation and trajectory optimization algorithm is proposed,named HDRT algorithm,where deep Q network(DQN)and deep deterministic policy gradient(DDPG)are invoked to process discrete and continuous variables,respectively.Simulation results show that the proposed HDRT algorithm converges fast and outperforms other benchmarks in the aspect of user energy consumption and latency.
基金supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China(2024YFB4504500)Shanghai Collaborative Innovation Project(24xtcx00500).
文摘Unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)have become one of the key technologies to achieve future data collection due to their high mobility,rapid deployment,low cost,and the ability to establish line-of-sight communication links.However,when UAV swarm perform tasks in narrow spaces,they often encounter various spatial obstacles,building shielding materials,and high-speed node movements,which result in intermittent network communication links and cannot support the smooth comple-tion of tasks.In this paper,a high mobility and dynamic topol-ogy of the UAV swarm is particularly considered and the high dynamic mobile topology-based clustering(HDMTC)algorithm is proposed.Simulation and real flight verification results verify that the proposed HDMTC algorithm achieves higher stability of net-work,longer link expiration time(LET),and longer node lifetime,all of which improve the communication performance for UAV swarm networks.
基金supported by the National Key R&D Program of China(No.2022YFB3104502)the National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.62301251)+2 种基金the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province of China under Project(No.BK20220883)the open research fund of National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory,Southeast University,China(No.2024D04)the Young Elite Scientists Sponsorship Program by CAST(No.2023QNRC001).
文摘The environment of low-altitude urban airspace is complex and variable due to numerous obstacles,non-cooperative aircraft,and birds.Unmanned Aerial Vehicles(UAVs)leveraging environmental information to achieve three-dimension collision-free trajectory planning is the prerequisite to ensure airspace security.However,the timely information of surrounding situation is difficult to acquire by UAVs,which further brings security risks.As a mature technology leveraged in traditional civil aviation,the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast(ADS-B)realizes continuous surveillance of the information of aircraft.Consequently,we leverage ADS-B for surveillance and information broadcasting,and divide the aerial airspace into multiple sub-airspaces to improve flight safety in UAV trajectory planning.In detail,we propose the secure Sub-airSpaces Planning(SSP)algorithm and Particle Swarm Optimization Rapidly-exploring Random Trees(PSO-RRT)algorithm for the UAV trajectory planning in law-altitude airspace.The performance of the proposed algorithm is verified by simulations and the results show that SSP reduces both the maximum number of UAVs in the sub-airspace and the length of the trajectory,and PSO-RRT reduces the cost of UAV trajectory in the sub-airspace.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Nos.12272104,U22B2013).
文摘This paper investigates the challenges associated with Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) collaborative search and target tracking in dynamic and unknown environments characterized by limited field of view. The primary objective is to explore the unknown environments to locate and track targets effectively. To address this problem, we propose a novel Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) method based on Graph Neural Network (GNN). Firstly, a method is introduced for encoding continuous-space multi-UAV problem data into spatial graphs which establish essential relationships among agents, obstacles, and targets. Secondly, a Graph AttenTion network (GAT) model is presented, which focuses exclusively on adjacent nodes, learns attention weights adaptively and allows agents to better process information in dynamic environments. Reward functions are specifically designed to tackle exploration challenges in environments with sparse rewards. By introducing a framework that integrates centralized training and distributed execution, the advancement of models is facilitated. Simulation results show that the proposed method outperforms the existing MARL method in search rate and tracking performance with less collisions. The experiments show that the proposed method can be extended to applications with a larger number of agents, which provides a potential solution to the challenging problem of multi-UAV autonomous tracking in dynamic unknown environments.
文摘Unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)imagery poses significant challenges for object detection due to extreme scale variations,high-density small targets(68%in VisDrone dataset),and complex backgrounds.While YOLO-series models achieve speed-accuracy trade-offs via fixed convolution kernels and manual feature fusion,their rigid architectures struggle with multi-scale adaptability,as exemplified by YOLOv8n’s 36.4%mAP and 13.9%small-object AP on VisDrone2019.This paper presents YOLO-LE,a lightweight framework addressing these limitations through three novel designs:(1)We introduce the C2f-Dy and LDown modules to enhance the backbone’s sensitivity to small-object features while reducing backbone parameters,thereby improving model efficiency.(2)An adaptive feature fusion module is designed to dynamically integrate multi-scale feature maps,optimizing the neck structure,reducing neck complexity,and enhancing overall model performance.(3)We replace the original loss function with a distributed focal loss and incorporate a lightweight self-attention mechanism to improve small-object recognition and bounding box regression accuracy.Experimental results demonstrate that YOLO-LE achieves 39.9%mAP@0.5 on VisDrone2019,representing a 9.6%improvement over YOLOv8n,while maintaining 8.5 GFLOPs computational efficiency.This provides an efficient solution for UAV object detection in complex scenarios.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.62371080 and 62031006)the National Science Foundation of Chongqing,China(No.CSTB2022NSCQ-MSX0597)the Venture&Innovation Support Program for Chongqing Overseas Returnees,China(No.cx2022063)。
文摘This paper presents a design method to implement an antenna array characterized by ultra-wide beam coverage,low profile,and low Sidelobe Level(SLL)for the application of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(UAV)air-to-ground communication.The array consists of ten broadside-radiating,ultrawide-beamwidth elements that are cascaded by a central-symmetry series-fed network with tapered currents following Dolph-Chebyshev distribution to provide low SLL.First,an innovative design of end-fire Huygens source antenna that is compatible with metal ground is presented.A low-profile,half-mode Microstrip Patch Antenna(MPA)is utilized to serve as the magnetic dipole and a monopole is utilized to serves as the electric dipole,constructing the compact,end-fire,grounded Huygens source antenna.Then,two opposite-oriented end-fire Huygens source antennas are seamlessly integrated into a single antenna element in the form of monopole-loaded MPA to accomplish the ultrawide,broadside-radiating beam.Particular consideration has been applied into the design of series-fed network as well as antenna element to compensate the adverse coupling effects between elements on the radiation performance.Experiment indicates an ultrawide Half-Power Beamwidth(HPBW)of 161°and a low SLL of-25 dB with a high gain of 12 d Bi under a single-layer configuration.The concurrent ultrawide beamwidth and low SLL make it particularly attractive for applications of UAV air-to-ground communication.
基金co-supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities,China。
文摘Effect web will be an important combat means to achieve accurate,efficient,agile and reliable destruction of enemy targets.The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles(UAV)cluster in warfare has become a key element in the battle for military superiority between nations.The construction of UAV cluster effect web is a kind of combinatorial optimization in essence.By selecting the optimal combination in the limited equipment concentration,the whole network can be optimized.Firstly,in order to improve the combinatorial optimization efficiency of UAV cluster effect web,NSGA-Ⅱbased on deep Q-network(DQN-based NSGA-Ⅱ)is proposed.This algorithm is used to solve the Multi-Objective Combinatorial Optimization(MOCO)problem in the construction of effect web.Secondly,a dynamic generation method is devised to solve the problem caused by the possible destruction of enemy and our node under the fierce confrontation between the two sides.Finally,the simulation results show that the DQN-based NSGA-Ⅱis better than the genetic algorithm with single operator.The comparison experiment shows that the weight of evaluation indexes will have a corresponding influence on the optimization results.
