Critical Node-Aware UAV Swarm Path Planning in Disaster Zones
Javed, Sadaf Ahmad, Rizwan Hassan, Ali Ahmed, Waqas Zhao, Liang Guizani, Mohsen
Javed, Sadaf
Ahmad, Rizwan
Hassan, Ali
Ahmed, Waqas
Zhao, Liang
Guizani, Mohsen
Supervisor
Department
Machine Learning
Embargo End Date
Type
Journal article
Date
2025
License
Language
English
Collections
Research Projects
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Journal Issue
Abstract
The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-assisted networks play a vital role in disaster circumstances for quick rescue operations by enabling emergency communication services. Unlike conventional networks, emergency networks have unique challenges, such as encountering Critical Nodes (CNs) that contain vital information. The effectiveness of rescue operations mainly depends on the coverage of these CNs to retrieve essential data for coordinating rescue efforts. In this context, Age-of-Information (AoI) is used to evaluate the timely collection of data from CNs. Voronoi diagram-based partitioning is employed as an adaptive mechanism linked with UAV swarm size and K-means clustering to enable nodes distribution-aware spatial partitioning, ensuring collision-free path planning in disaster scenarios. The distance-optimized CNA trajectory is proposed to optimize UAV swarm paths for coverage maximization and AoI minimization by adapting the scalarization approach. The performance of the proposed algorithm is analyzed based on coverage, AoI, trajectory length, and total flight time. Simulation results show that the proposed distance-optimized CNA trajectory outperforms the conventional distance-based and the CNA trajectory by 25.27% and 41.20%, respectively. It improves the CNs coverage and AoI of distance-based trajectory by 30% and 10%, priority-based Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) by 47% and 7%, and CNA trajectory by 13% and 17%, respectively. When the percentage of CNs increases from 10% to 40%, the number of covered CNs increases linearly for a given number of hovering points.
Citation
S. Javed, R. Ahmad, A. Hassan, W. Ahmed, L. Zhao and M. Guizani, "Critical Node-Aware UAV Swarm Path Planning in Disaster Zones," in IEEE Internet of Things Journal, doi: 10.1109/JIOT.2025.3631566.
Source
IEEE Internet of Things Journal
Conference
Keywords
Emergency network, UAV swarm, Path planning, UAV-assisted network, Aerial base station, Critical nodes
Subjects
Source
Publisher
IEEE