Towards reliable and high-frequency ultra-wideband ranging in agile swarms of micro aerial drones

Highly agile drone swarms operating without GNSS require both high-frequency and reliable distance measurements to coordinate complex maneuvers and prevent collisions. Ultra- Wideband radios uniquely act as sensors by leveraging communication to provide centimeter-accurate localization information while simultaneously serving as a wireless medium for data exchange. However, today’s approaches to UWB swarm ranging do not provide sufficient update rates and the scalability required for complex maneuvers in large swarms. This paper presents a medium access control protocol designed for high-frequency and reliable distance measurements in highly mobile environments. Designed for mobile ad-hoc networks, it does not require static infrastructure and builds on the scalability of Many-to-Many ranging and precise time synchronization based on Glossy. Our evaluation on two testbeds shows that our proposed MAC achieves high update rates with up to 30 Hz per neighbor in a dense environment of 13 nodes.

Subjects

Ultra-Wideband Ranging

Micro-Drones

Aerial Swarms

DDC Class

629.892: Robot

621.38: Electronics, Communications Engineering

Lizenz

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Name

2025_Richter_TowardsReliableAndHighFrequencyUltraWidebandRangingInAgileSwarmsOfMicroAerialDrones.pdf

Size

6.93 MB

Format

Adobe PDF

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Towards reliable and high-frequency ultra-wideband ranging in agile swarms of micro aerial drones