Communications and robotics simulation in UAVs: A case study on aerial synthetic aperture antennas

Driven by their versatility and autonomy, advanced unmanned aerial systems have indicated substantial promise along the development of current communication networks, as well as in support of new communication platforms. The resulting integration of robotic and communication systems brings increased levels of complexity, which cannot be modeled accurately by conventional approaches. An example of this are aerial synthetic aperture antennas, in which an aerial robotic swarm coordinates their flight patterns and communication exchanges to produce a synthetic aperture. The accurate representation of such a system mandates the careful simulation of wireless communications, antenna radiation patterns, flight dynamics, and even environmental conditions. This article details an integrated communications and robotics simulation framework, which enables the assessment of these emerging systems. The benefits of this new approach are illustrated for the aerial synthetic aperture antenna example, but extend to a wide array of problems stemming from the union of communications and robotics. This novel modeling platform makes it possible to design and analyze joint flight and communication protocols for unmanned aerial systems. The obtained results provide valuable insights into the operation of swarm-based synthetic aperture antennas. Moreover, the methodology introduced in this work is flexible and can be readily applied to other instances of joint communication and robotic systems.