Topology optimised fixed‐time consensus for multi‐UAV system in a multipath fading channel
Hao Lei, Xiaohan Qi, Zhihua Yang · IET Communications · 2020
Time‐varying connectivity is one of main challenges faced by controlling a team of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the multipath fading channel, incurring low accuracy and significant convergence time of formation control law. To address this issue, in this study, a topology optimised based decentralised consensus is developed for controlling a multi‐UAV system in a multipath fading channel, in which a formation structure reconfiguration scheme is proposed as well as a transmission power allocating algorithm to guarantee the control accuracy in a limited convergence time. In particular, the objective function for topology optimisation is well‐designed by considering the second eigenvalue of Laplacian matrix of topology as a feasible index of connectivity degree. To improve the efficiency of information transmission, a specified consensus protocol is proposed with well‐tailored packet format and signalling procedure for control messages. Through the comparative simulation results, the proposed consensus can achieve high convergence accuracy and less convergence time in a multipath fading channel, indicating high resilience of the proposed protocol under a multipath fading channel.