Enabling Information Transmission in Low-Throughput Wireless Channels for Aerial Disaster Monitoring Systems

Abstract

The utilization of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for disaster relief has significantly increased in recent years, especially in the fields of aerial monitoring and communication support. At the same time, research on wireless communication channels between UAVs operating in disaster areas and their base station has been neglected, despite its importance for system operability and information transmission. Therefore, this paper addresses requirements of a suitable data channel on the use case of an Aerial Monitoring System for distributed disaster networks. We put special emphasis on possible applications using low-throughput technologies, like LoRa, to enable information transmission on low-cost hardware without centralized infrastructure, which is highly important for UAV applications in disaster scenarios. Specifically, we propose the aggregation of topology information to reduce message sizes and increase usability under challenging network conditions. Our results highlight that the aggregated monitoring information can be transferred to the base station with reasonable delay and reliability, possible with a low-throughput channel as low as 300 bit/s. At the same time, the aggregated information still maintains an adequate representation of the monitored topology of the distributed disaster network.