A Cooperative Transmission Scheme in Drone-based Networks

In this paper, we propose an uplink multi usermultiple input multiple output (MU-MIMO) cooperative retransmission control scheme for achieving high reliability and transmission efficiency in autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (i.e., drone) flight and drone-to-drone communication. This work supports efforts to design inter-drone mesh networks. Using formation flying and relay transmission, it is possible to construct free drone network topologies that achieve robust communication with very little variation in the propagation environment. Under relay transmission schemes, throughput is significantly reduced by the bandwidth occupied each time the drone relays and, although direct transmission can be used to overcome these limitations, direct transmission error between distant locations will be enhanced by large variations in propagation environment and fluctuations in drone positions. The proposed scheme with cooperative retransmission control can achieve high transmission reliability and efficiency even under cases of high transmission error. Computer simulation revealed that the proposed method achieves a direct transmission throughput 1.5 times better than that of a conventional scheme. It was also shown that the proposed cooperative retransmission scheme requires only about three stations to achieve acceptable results.