Effects of time delay on long range formation control for unmanned aerial vehicles

Abstract

his paper present to develop long range formation control for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to broaden UAV operation region. Operation region of a small UAV is often limited within a line of sight propagation due to limited wireless network and communication. Most common wireless networks have a high bandwidth but require a clear line of sight without any obstacles. Recently, a number of researches are developing to utilize a mobile network to control UAVs but still limit in use for UAV formation flight control due to latency time for control. The effect of delay on the UAV system is not negligible as increasing a number of UAVs to be controlled simultaneously. In this paper, a basic architecture for long range formation control using a mobile network is developed to maximize operational range without sacrificing control performance. Therefore, the effect of the latency on the system architecture would be discussed in two aspects. First, the stability of each UAV and, second, the synchronization stability of the formation flight.