Optimization of Base Location and Patrol Routes for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Border Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance

The location-routing problem (LRP) of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in border patrol for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance is investigated, where the locations of UAV base stations and the UAV flying routes for visiting the targets in border area are jointly optimized. The capacity of the base station and the endurance of the UAV are considered. A binary integer programming model is developed to formulate the problem, and two heuristic algorithms combined with local search strategies are designed for solving the problem. The experiment design for simulating the distribution of stations and targets in border is proposed for generating random test instances. Also, an example based on the practical border in Guangxi is presented to illustrate the problem and the solution approach. The performance of the two algorithms is analysed and compared through randomly generated instances.