Aerodynamic-aware Energy Saving for Fixed-wing UAV under Data Collection Requirements

Improving flight endurance limited by on-board energy is a critical issue in UAV-assisted communication systems. Due to the natural gliding capabilities of fixed-wing UAVs, the aerodynamic forces can be leveraged to reduce the propulsion energy consumption. In this paper, we investigate a UAV attitude control strategy to optimize the energy consumption for data collection. A dynamic model is developed to capture the key aerodynamic effects on the propulsion energy consumption and trajectory of UAV. Then, an energy minimization problem is formulated with the flight angle selection constraints and the data collection requirements. To efficiently solve this problem, a piecewise attitude control strategy is proposed to obtain the values of yaw angle and pitch angle. This is the first attempt which considers the effect of aerodynamic forces on designing energy efficient data collection scheme for fixed-wing UAVs. Simulation results show that the proposed strategy wisely adjusts the attitude of UAV based on wind field to complete the data collection mission with less energy consumption.