Communication failure analysis for a fleet formation flight of drones based on absorbing Markov chain
Rana Abdallah, Charles M Sarraf, Raed Kouta, Jaafar Gaber, Maxime Wack · 2018
Several unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) flight in a formation fleet are used to improve the effectiveness of civilian missions such as firefighting, searching, rescuing, etc., as well as the success of military applications. The increase use of these cooperative systems in hazardous environments makes the reliability improvement essential in order to prevent any catastrophic event. In this article, we aim to ensure a successful communication between the drones from one side, and between the drones and the ground station from the other side. We propose to identify, the different fault states and their probabilities during a communication. An Absorbing Markov Analysis approach is developed for these states. This framework can be used to find the riskiest scenarios and elements that need to be addressed in order to improve the reliability.