Browsing by Author "Nadziejko, Aleksandra Katarzyna"
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- Wireless Sensor Networking Applied to Swarms of Aquatic DronesPublication . Nadziejko, Aleksandra Katarzyna; Velez, Fernando José da SilvaAquatic Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USV) have potential in a variety of maritime activities such as environmental monitoring or sea-life tracking. They can be applied to military missions sup¬porting army in potentially dangerous situations such as reconnaissance or surveillance. USV are capable of many tasks due to technological progress and minimization of equipment in recent years. Size and price drop while reliability improved enables development of large scale multi-agent systems consisting of autonomous USVs. Multi-agent system of aquatic autonomous USVs may act like a distributed sensing system im¬proving the overall performance when compared to the performance of one unit of USV: more units in the system, larger monitored area. A promising approach inspired from nature is swarm intelligence, which can be found for instance in population of insects such as ants. Swarmbe¬haviour is a motion of large number of units, where each one is autonomous but only as a group they are able to solve the problem. The exchange of information between units is essential for the success of the group. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have potential as communication architecture applied to swarms. A scenario for the communication both with and within the swarm has been proposed. The challenges implied by tough environmental conditions call for heterogeneous approach such as the one proposed in this dissertation. A communication within the swarm is held using short-range communication technology such as XBee-PRO modules. All nodes acting as sensing agents are equipped with short-range communication technology. The communication with the swarm is held using nodes acting as gateways to the shore equipped with long-range technology, such as SX1272 modules from Semtech, called LoRa. The deployment of nodes acting as gateways to the shore, called buoys, with fixed localization has been proposed. Each node in the network is aware of the GPS coordinates of buoys, thus in case of communication loss, it can orient itself in the direction of the nearest buoy, increasing chances of successful communication with the base station. The short-range communication XBee-PRO technology has been tested in order to determine communication range with and without Line of Sight (LoS). The objective is to improve the range of the communication link, which nowadays in held via Wi-Fi in the distance around 30 m. The results were promising for real-world implementation into swarms of aquatic surface drones.