Parallel Algorithm on GPU for Wireless Sensor Data Acquisition Using a Team of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

Area of Science:

• Robotics and Automation
• Wireless Sensor Networks
• Computational Intelligence

Background:

• Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) often lack direct communication infrastructure.
• Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) offer a flexible solution for data collection in remote or inaccessible areas.
• Efficient path planning and data acquisition strategies are crucial for WSNs relying on mobile collectors.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a framework for wireless sensor data acquisition using a team of UAVs.
• To optimize UAV data collection routes and ensure collision-free trajectories.
• To enhance the computational efficiency of the data acquisition framework through parallel processing.

Main Methods:

• Iterative k-means clustering for sensor grouping and Download Point (DP) identification.
• Single-Source-Shortest-Path (SSSP) algorithm for optimal path computation between DPs with turn reduction.
• Genetic algorithm with 2-opt local search for solving the multi-travelling salesperson problem (TSP) for UAV tours.
• Parallel implementation of SSSP on a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) for accelerated computation.
• Collision avoidance strategy for generating safe UAV trajectories.

Main Results:

• The proposed framework successfully groups sensors and plans optimized UAV data collection routes.
• A significant speed-up of 33.3x was achieved by parallelizing the SSSP algorithm on a GPU, reducing runtime to 20.7 seconds for 100 sensors.
• The framework demonstrated efficiency in calculating optimized trajectories for UAVs in realistic 3D environments.
• Collision-free trajectories were successfully generated, ensuring safe UAV operations.

Conclusions:

• The developed UAV-based framework provides an efficient solution for wireless sensor data acquisition.
• Parallel GPU implementation of the SSSP algorithm offers substantial performance improvements.
• The method is effective for optimizing multi-UAV data collection missions in complex terrains.