This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been
fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TII.2019.2913683, IEEE
Transactions on Industrial Informatics
An Algorithm of Reactive Collision Free 3D
Deployment of Networked Unmanned Aerial
Vehicles for Surveillance and Monitoring
Hailong Huang and Andrey V. Savkin
Abstract—This paper focuses on the application of surveillance
and monitoring using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). A
novel coverage model is proposed to characterize the quality
of coverage (QoC) of a target by a UAV. Based on this model,
a reactive collision free 3D deployment algorithm is proposed,
with the goal of maximizing the overall QoC of targets by a
network of UAVs. The algorithm consists of two navigation laws
for the horizontal movement and the vertical movement, both
of which are easily implementable in real time. The convergence
of the algorithm is proved, and the computational complexity is
analysed. Computer simulations are conducted to demonstrate
the performance of the proposed method.
Index Terms—Unmanned aerial vehicles, network of drones,
reactive deployment, surveillance and monitoring, quality of
coverage.
I. I NTRODUCTION
U NMANNED aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones, which
were initially used in military applications, have now
been applied widely for civilian probems [1], such as infras-
tructure inspection [2], wireless communication support [3],
surveillance and monitoring [4]. In surveillance applications,
UAVs are equipped with some specific sensors, such as
cameras. They fly into the sky and monitor ground targets
of interest, such as humans, vehicles, landmarks, animals for
the purpose of surveillance, security, etc [5].
There is a number of publications focusing on the surveil-
lance application using UAVs [6], [7], [8]. Though they
consider different problems, one similarity lies in the coverage
model. As shown in Fig. 1, a UAV is equipped with a ground
facing camera with the visibility angle α. The camera can see a
circular area on the ground and the radius of this area depends
on the altitude and α. If a target is within this circle, it is
considered to be covered by the UAV. For several targets inside
the circle, though they are all covered, they may correspond
to various quality of coverage (QoC). For example, the target
U1 in Fig. 1 is covered with a lower QoC than U2 . The reason
is that since U1 is on the boundary of the vision cone, a small
movement of either the target or the UAV may lead to the loss
of such a target. In contrast, U2 is far from the boundary and
the coverage of this target is not sensitive to a small movement.
Moreover, if a target is closer to the boundary of the vision
cone, the measurement noise is bigger. Therefore, although
This work is supported by Australian Research Council.
H. Huang and A.V. Savkin are with School of Electrical Engineering and
Telecommunications, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia.
(E-mail: {hailong.huang, a.savkin}@unsw.edu.au).
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1
UAV
UAV-GN link UAV-UAV link
𝛼 UAV
𝑈2
𝑈1 𝛼
GN
𝒟
Fig. 1: Using UAVs for target surveillance.
both U1 and U2 are within the vision cone of the UAV, they are
monitored with different QoC. However, to the best knowledge
of the authors, the existing publications simply regard them as
being covered, while have not studied the QoC.
In this paper, a novel coverage model characterizing the
QoC of a targets by a UAV is proposed. Beyond the basic
vision cone model, this model distinguishes targets at different
positions inside the cone. Based on this model, a reactive al-
gorithm is developed to deploy UAVs in continuous 3D space.
For a given fleet of UAVs, the objective is to maximize the
overall QoC of a given set of targets. It is assumed that each
UAV can estimate the locations of targets which are seen by
the on-board camera, using some available image processing
techniques. Also, each UAV can measure the positions of
other nearby UAVs. With these two pieces of information as
input, each UAV runs the proposed algorithm independently
to decide its movement. The movement of each UAV is
separated into the horizontal sub-movement and the vertical
sub-movement. The proposed algorithm consists of two navi-
gation laws for these two sub-movements, respectively. Several
constraints have to be satisfied when UAVs move. There is a
set of ground nodes (GNs), referring to some data centres, that
need to collect some required information from UAVs timely.
The UAVs are required to maintain valid links with GNs all
the time, so that any required information can be delivered to
the data centres without significant delays. Also, some pairs
of UAVs are required to always keep communication links
between each other. Furthermore, the UAVs need to avoid
collisions with each other [9], and they are not allowed to
enter some no-flight areas.
The main contributions of this paper are the coverage model
and the reactive collision free 3D deployment algorithm. The
coverage model not only tells whether a target is covered,
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Transactions on Industrial Informatics
but also specifies how well it is covered. The algorithm is
distributed and based on local measurements. It consists of two
navigation laws, both of which are easily implementable. We
give a mathematically rigorous proof of the convergence of the
algorithm, and analyse its complexity. Computer simulations
are conducted to show the performance of the developed
algorithm.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II
discusses some relevant publications. Section III introduces
the system model, formally states the studied optimization
problem, and presents the proposed deployment algorithm.
Section IV presents simulation results and finally, Section V
concludes the paper.
II. R ELATED W ORKS
In this section, some related publications are reviewed first.
Then, the similarities and differences between this paper and
the reviewed publications are discussed to show the novelty
of this paper.
In the surveillance applications using UAVs, the cover-
age performance is a key system metric. Several interesting
problems have been studied. To track a single target, the
reference [10] proposes a simple control strategy to reach a
given target view angle; and the reference [11] focuses on
optimal routing for two UAVs cooperatively tracking a moving
target. For multiple targets, in [12], the problem of minimizing
the number of UAVs to fully cover a given set of targets
is considered. In [6], the authors study the joint problem of
coverage, connectivity, and charging UAVs. In [7], the authors
address the optimization problem of covering a set of targets
with a fleet of UAVs. The goal is to deploy a connected set
of UAVs continuously monitoring the targets, and collecting
or sending data to them. As an extension, the authors of [8]
consider the problem of monitoring a set of mobile sensors.
The authors of [13] provide a power efficient and reliable
scheduling by adjusting the UAVs’ positions to ensure the
surveillance of all the targets.
The coverage problem related to UAVs has also been studied
in the application of providing wireless communication to
cellular users. The paper [14] focuses on the modelling of
air-to-ground wireless communication channel and studies the
optimal altitude of the UAV to maximize the user coverage.
The reference [15] considers the problem of deploying the
minimum number of UAVs at the same altitude to cover all
the users. The paper [16] uses a K-means clustering algorithm
to partition the ground users into K clusters which are served
by K UAVs to offload the demand at the base stations. The
publication [17] aims at maximizing user coverage and mini-
mizing the communication cost between the UAVs. The paper
[18] considers the issue maximizing the coverage of users and
proposes a centre of mass based distributed algorithm. With
the objective of maximizing the number of covered targets,
the authors of [19] propose a reactive algorithm to navigate
each flying robot based on virtual forces including hotspots
attractive force, target attractive force, nearby robot repulsive
force, and obstacle repulsive force. The authors of [20] propose
a scheme to cover all ground users using a minimum number
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2
of UAVs, while maximizing the fulfilment of their data rate
requirements.
Besides the surveillance coverage and wireless communi-
cation coverage, another category is sensing coverage, which
is well studied in mobile sensor networks [21]. Three main
types of sensing coverage have been comprehensively consid-
ered: barrier coverage [22], sweep coverage [23] and blanket
coverage [24]. In barrier coverage, an array of sensing nodes
is arranged to form a sensing barrier so that any intrusion
through the barrier is detected. In sweep coverage, a number
of sensing nodes move across the area to detect and search for
objects of interest in the field. The idea of blanket coverage
is to deploy a network of sensing nodes to monitor an area
of interest such that any object appearing in the area can be
detected.
There are several key differences between this paper and
the aforementioned ones. Firstly, the coverage in surveillance
applications using UAVs focuses on a set of targets, rather than
the area of interest in sensing coverage. Secondly, in terms of
the coverage model, most of these publications simply follow
the vision cone model, while the model proposed by this
paper distinguishes the QoC of targets at different positions.
Thirdly, beyond the existing approaches for the 2D case like
[3], [15], [17], this paper considers deploying UAVs in 3D
space. Although some publications have already considered
the 3D case like [6], [7], [8], [12], they either discretize the
space into grids or select positions for UAVs from a given set
of candidates. Thus, the mixed integer linear programming is
often used to formulate the optimization problems. In contrast,
the algorithm presented in this paper finds positions for UAVs
in 3D space without discretization. Furthermore, most of the
available approaches for UAVs deployment are proactive and
centralized. They compute the positions of UAVs before the
real deployment and they require the global information as
input. The references like [3], [17], [18] have proposed some
decentralized algorithms, however, they are not suitable to
implement on-line, due to their assumptions of knowing the
user density. This paper aims at developing a reactive and
decentralized algorithm that navigates each UAV based on the
local measurements rather than the global information.
III. P ROBLEM S TATEMENT AND M AIN R ESULTS
Consider a system consisting of n UAVs labelled i =
1, 2, . . . , n and k ground nodes (GNs) labelled h = 1, 2, . . . , k.
Some UAVs and GNs should be able to communicate to each
other according to a given connected graph G which is called
the communication graph. The graph G has n + k vertices
v1u , v2u , . . . , vnu , v1g , . . . , vkg that correspond to n UAVs and k
GNs, where the superscript u represents UAV and g represents
GN. Vertices viu and vhu are connected by an edge if the UAVs
i and h should be able to communicate. Vertices viu and vhg are
connected by an edge if the UAV i and the GN h should be
able to communicate. GNs are not required to communicate
to each other. For instance, in the illustrative example shown
in Fig. 1, the UAV on the right hand side is connected to the
UAV on the left, and the latter is also connected to a GN.
Let (x, y) be Cartesian coordinates on the ground plane and
z be the coordinate axis perpendicular to the ground plane.
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Moreover, let D be some given bounded closed area on the centred at (xi , yi ). Assume that if the distance between the
ground with a smooth boundary and the projections of UAVs target j and the projection (xi , yi ) of the UAV i on the ground
can be inside or on the boundary of D, rather than outside it. plane (x, y) is no greater than ri , then the UAV i knows the
Also, let Zmin and Zmax be given minimum and maximum coordinates Uj of the target j.
altitudes for UAV deployment, Zmax > Zmin > 0. Assume Let w(d) be a given differentiable weighting function such
that UAVs can be deployed only at some points P1 , P2 , . . . , Pn that w(d) and its derivative w0 (d) are defined for d ≥ 0 and
of the region D × [Zmin , Zmax ], i.e. if (xi , yi , zi ) are the co- satisfy the following conditions:
ordinates of the UAV i, then (xi , yi ) ∈ D, zi ∈ [Zmin , Zmax ]
w(d) > 0 ∀d ∈ [0, 1), w(d) = 0 ∀d ≥ 1;
for all i. Notice that D may have ”holes” that may corre-
0 0 0
spond, for example, to tall buildings or some other areas w (0) = w (1) = 0, w (d) < 0 ∀d ∈ (0, 1). (5)
over which UAVs are not allowed to be deployed. The region Furthermore, let g(z) be a given differentiable weighting
D × [Zmin , Zmax ] is called the UAV deployment region. function such that g(z) and its derivative g 0 (z) are defined
Considering the limitation of communication range, it is for all altitudes z ∈ [Zmin , Zmax ] and satisfy the following
required that the UAVs and GNs, which should be able to conditions:
communicate with each other according to G, are within cer-
tain ranges to have reliable wireless links. Consider the motion g(z) > 0, g 0 (z) < 0 ∀z ∈ [Zmin , Zmax ]. (6)
of UAVs at any time satisfying the following constraints:
Examples of w(d) and g(z) satisfying (5) and (6) are the
|Pi , Ph | ≤ R1 (1) following functions:
if the UAVs viu , vhu are connected by an edge in G; and w(d) = cos(πd) + 1 ∀d ∈ [0, 1); w(d) = 0 ∀d ≥ 1,
1
|Pi , Qh | ≤ R2 (2) g(z) = ∀z ∈ [Zmin , Zmax ]. (7)
z
if the UAV viu and the GN vhg are connected by an edge Definition III.1. QoC of target j from UAV i: For target j
in G. Here Qh is the fixed location of GN vhg , and |·, ·| de- (j = 1, 2, . . . , N ), the QoC from the UAV i is defined by the
notes the standard 3D Euclidean distance between two points. dj
function g(zi )w( rii ), where ri is defined by (4), and dji is the
R1 > 0 and R2 > 0 are some given constants describing the distance between the target j and the projection (xi , yi ) of the
communication ranges between UAVs and a UAV and a GN, UAV i to the ground plane.
beyond which the wireless links may be unreliable. Notice
dj
that the conditions (1) and (2) are under the assumption that It is clear that g(zi )w( rii ) = 0 if the target is outside of
the wireless signal is in a perfect communication situation dj
the visibility cone of the UAV i. Moreover, g(zi )w( rii ) is
where packets are always delivered as long as the two nodes dj
are within a certain distance (either R1 or R2 ). The radio increasing as dji is decreasing; and g(zi )w( rii ) is increasing
propagation model will be considered in the future study. as zi is increasing. Hence, the closer the UAV i is to the
Furthermore, the probability of physical collision between target j (the smaller the altitude of the UAV is), the bigger
dj
UAVs arises, as they move around the UAV deployment g(zi )w( rii ) is. On the other hand, if the altitude of the UAV
region. Let dsaf e > 0 be a given constant describing the is fixed, the closer the target is to the boundary of the visibility
minimum safety distance between UAVs. It is also assumed dj
cone of the UAV, the smaller g(zi )w( rii ) is.
that dsaf e < R1 . The safety requirement is that at any time
the following constraints should hold Definition III.2. QoC of target j: Since a target may be
monitored by more than one UAVs at the same time, the QoC
|Pi , Ph | ≥ dsaf e (3) of this target is defined as the largest QoC among all the UAVs.
For target j, introduce the pair (z j , dj ) such as
for all i 6= h. It is always assumed that at the initial time, the
safety condition (3) holds for all i 6= h. The requirement (3) dj dji
allows to avoid collisions of drones with each other, which is g(z j )w( ) = max g(zi )w( ), (8)
rj i=1,...,n ri
very important in navigation and deployment, see e.g. [25],
[26], [27], [28], [29]. In practice, the constant dsaf e may be i.e. (z j , dj ) corresponds to the UAV which monitor the target
dj
different for different types of UAVs. The value of this constant j with the best QoC in sense of the measure g(zi )w( rii ).
is selected based on properties of a specific UAV type and Definition III.3. QoC by the UAVs: For the targets’ loca-
should be sufficient to avoid any possible collisions between tions U1 , U2 , . . . , UN , the QoC by the UAVs placed at points
UAVs, see e.g. [30], [31], [32]. P1 , P2 , . . . , Pn is described by the following function:
There are N ground point-wise targets labelled 1, 2, . . . , N
with the coordinates U1 , U2 , . . . , UN where Uj ∈ R2 . Notice X dj
W (P1 , . . . , Pn ) := g(z j )w( j ). (9)
that the targets may be outside of the region D. r
j=1,...,N
Assume that all UAVs have a given observation angle 0 <
α < π, so that the UAV i with the coordinates (xi , yi , zi ) can It is also assumed that each UAV knows the coordinates of
only see ground targets that are inside of the circle of radius some other UAVs that are close enough to it. For this purpose,
α it is assumed that each UAV is equipped with a GPS and it
ri := tan( )zi (4) knows its own current position. Every a certain period of time,
2

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Transactions on Industrial Informatics
it broadcasts its current position. A UAV can receive at most
n − 1 messages from other UAVs. Furthermore, each UAV
knows for each target that is inside its vision cone via some
image processing techniques. With the positions of neighbour
UAVs, whether the minimum in (8) is achieved at this UAV
or not can be known by a UAV.
Now consider the following optimization problem:
W (P1 , . . . , Pn ) → max,
where the maximum is taken for fixed targets’ locations
U1 , U2 , . . . , UN over all P1 , . . . , Pn ∈ D × [Zmin , Zmax ]
satisfying the constraints (1), (2), (3).
Problem Statement: The optimization problem under con-
sideration is as follows: for the given targets’ locations
U1 , U2 , . . . , UN , the communication graph G, the UAV de-
ployment region D × [Zmin , Zmax ], the GNs’ locations
Q1 , . . . , Qk , the weighting functions w(d), g(z) and the con-
stants r1 , r2 , dsaf e , move UAVs to locations P1 , . . . , Pn ∈ D
that maximize the function (10) so that the constraints (1), (2),
(3) are always satisfied.
The following notations are needed. The set of N targets is
divided into n non-intersecting subsets U1 , U2 , . . . , Un where
for any i = 1, 2, . . . , n, Ui is the set of targets j for which
the distance between the target j and the projection (xi , yi ) of
the UAV i on the ground plane (x, y) is less than ri defined
by (4) and the maximum in (8) is achieved at this UAV i. In
cases, when the maximum in (8) is achieved at more than one
UAV, the target j belongs to the corresponding set Ui with the
smallest index i among all such UAVs.
Furthermore, for any i, consider an axes in the ground plane
(xi , yi ) departing from the current location of the UAV i into
some given direction. Let θ be the angle measured in the
counter-clockwise direction from this axes. θ takes values in
the interval [0, 2π). Now for all j ∈ Ui , θj denotes the angle
between the axes and the direction to the location of the target
Uj , see Fig. 2. Let β(θ) be the function defined as
X dj
β(θ) := − w0 ( ) cos(θj − θ). (11)
r
j∈Ui
Moreover, let γ(x, y, z) be the function defined as
X dj
γ(x, y, z) := g 0 (z) w( )
tan( α2 )z
j∈Ui
g(z) X j 0 dj
− α 2 d w( ).
tan( 2 )z tan( α2 )z
j∈Ui
Remark III.1. The functions (11) and (12) are defined to
navigate UAVs in horizontal direction and vertical direction,
respectively. Specifically, β(θ) is proportional to the deriva-
tive of the objective function W (P1 , . . . , Pn ) with respective
to the distance between the UAV and its covered targets
in the horizontal plane; and γ(x, y, z) is the derivative of
W (P1 , . . . , Pn ) with respective to the z coordinate in the
vertical direction. We will show how to use them to navigate
UAVs in the proposed algorithm (A1) – (A3).
The function W (P1 , . . . , Pn ) defined for all P1 , . . . , Pn ∈
D × [Zmin , Zmax ] is a continuous function on a compact set,
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4
ܷଶ
ߠଶ ܷଵ
ߠଵ axes
ߠଷ
ܲଵ
ܷଷ
Fig. 2: Construction of axes and θj .
(10)
hence, the maximum in the constrained optimization problem
(10), (1), (2), (3) is achieved at some P10 , . . . , Pn0 ∈ D ×
[Zmin , Zmax ] [33]. Therefore, there exists a non-empty set of
points of local maximum, and the global maximum is achieved
at one of them.
Before presenting the proposed algorithm, some properties
of the local optimal solution to the problem (10), (1), (2), (3)
are discussed.
Definition III.4. Let (P10 , P20 . . . , Pn0 ) ∈ D × [Zmin , Zmax ]
and (xi , yi , zi ) are the coordinates of Pi0 for any i. The point
(P10 , P20 . . . , Pn0 ) is called a stationary point of the constrained
optimization problem (10), (1), (2), (3), if for any i = 1, . . . , n,
at least one of the following five conditions holds:
S1: |Pi0 , Ph0 | = R1 for some i such that the corresponding
UAVs vir , vhr are connected by an edge in G;
S2: |Pi0 , Qh | = R2 for some i such that the corresponding
UAV vir and the corresponding GN vhb are connected by an
edge in G;
S3: |Pi , Ph | = dsaf e for some i 6= h;
S4: The projection (xi , yi ) of Pi0 to the ground plane (x, y)
belongs to the boundary of D;
S5: β(θ) = 0 for all θ ∈ [0, 2π) where β(θ) is defined by
(11), and at least one of the following three conditions holds:
S5A: zi = Zmin and γ(xi , yi , zi ) < 0 where γ(xi , yi , zi )
is defined by (12);
S5B: zi = Zmax and γ(xi , yi , zi ) > 0;
S5C: γ(xi , yi , zi ) = 0.
Proposition III.1. If (P10 , P20 . . . , Pn0 ) ∈ D × [Zmin , Zmax ]
is a local maximum in the constrained optimization problem
(10), (1), (2), (3), then (P10 , P20 . . . , Pn0 ) is a stationary point.
Proof. We prove that if (P10 , P20 . . . , Pn0 ) is a point of local
maximum and for some i all the conditions S1 – S4 do
not hold, then the condition S5 holds. First we notice that
(12)
if β(θ) < 0 for some θ ∈ [0, 2π), then β(θ̂) > 0 where θ̂ cor-
responds to the direction opposite to θ. Therefore, if S5 does
not hold, then β(θ) > 0 for some θ ∈ [0, 2π). Consider now
the straight line departing from the point Pi0 in the direction θ
in the plane (x, y) parallel to the ground plane. Moreover, con-
sider the movement of along this line with some constant speed
v > 0. Then the derivative Ẇ (P1 , . . . , Pn ) of the function (9)
along this trajectory satisfies Ẇ (P1 , . . . , Pn ) = vβ(θ) > 0.
Hence, for some small movement of the point Pi0 along this
straight line, the value W (P1 , . . . , Pn ) will increase, and since
S1 – S4 do not hold, the constraints (1), (2) and (3) will still
hold, and the coordinates (xi , yi ) of Pi0 will still be in D. This
means that if the conditions S1 – S4 together with the first of
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conditions S5 do not hold, we can make a small motion of Pi0 𝑑𝑠𝑎𝑓𝑒

𝑑𝑠𝑎𝑓𝑒
so that the function (10) increases. Hence, (P10 , P20 . . . , Pn0 ) 𝑃2
𝒫1
is not a local maximum. Now we prove that if all condition 𝒟 𝑃2
𝑃1 𝑃1 𝑄1
S1 – S4 do not hold, then at least one of three conditions 𝒟
𝒬1 𝒫1
S5A – S5C. Indeed, if all these three conditions and S1 – 𝑄1 𝒬1

S4 do not hold, we obviously can make a small motion of Pi (a) (b)

along the vertical axis zi so that the function (10) increases
and all the constraints of the constrained optimization problem 𝑃2 𝑑𝑠𝑎𝑓𝑒
still hold. Hence, (P10 , P20 . . . , Pn0 ) is not a local maximum.

𝛾(𝑥, 𝑦, 𝑧)
𝒟 𝑍𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝑧
The statement of Proposition III.1 immediately follows from 𝑃1 0
𝒫1 𝑍𝑚𝑎𝑥
this. 𝒬1 𝑄1

To describe our algorithm, some more notations are needed.
Let Ph and Qh denote the set of points Pi satisfying the
constraint (1) and (2) for a particular h where i and h are
connected in the communication graph G. It is obvious that
such sets are balls and their boundaries are spheres of radius
R1 and R2 , respectively. Moreover, let P̂h denote the set of
points Pi satisfying the constraint (3) for a particular h. It is
obvious that such sets are exteriors of spheres of radius dsaf e .
The proposed algorithm is as follows.
A1: Start with some initial points P1 , P2 . . . , Pn ∈ D ×
[Zmin , Zmax ] satisfying the constraints (1), (2) and (3). For
any i, continuously move the point Pi as follows:
A2: For each current location of Pi = (xi , yi , zi ), move Pi
in the plane (x, y) keeping the constant altitude zi as follows:
(i) if Pi is an interior point of all the sets D×zi , Ph , Qh , P̂h ,
find a value of θ0 ∈ [0, 2π) at which the maximum of the
function β(θ) defined by (11) is achieved. It is obvious that
β(θ0 ) ≥ 0. Continuously move the point Pi along a trajectory
we build so that the slope of the tangent to this trajectory is
always equal to θ0 . Stop this when Pi reaches a point beyond
which it is impossible to continue the trajectory of Pi so that
(xi , yi ) remains in D, and the conditions (1), (2), (3), β(θ0 ) ≥
0 hold;
(ii) if Pi is on the boundary of one of the sets D ×
zi , Ph , Qh , P̂h , then build a trajectory as in (i) with the circle
of possible directions θ ∈ [0, 2π) replaced by the semi-circle
cut by the tangent to the boundary of the corresponding set
(this guarantees that we will move Pi only in a direction that
does not leave D, Ph , Qh , P̂h , see Fig. 3b). Such a feasible
semi-circle is denoted by Θ1 ;
(iii) if Pi is on the boundary of two or more of the sets
D × zi , Ph , Qh , P̂h , then build a trajectory as in (i) with the
circle of possible directions θ ∈ [0, 2π) replaced by the sector
of this circle that is the intersection of the straight angles made
by the tangents to the boundaries of the corresponding sets,
see Fig. 3c. Such a feasible sector is denoted by Θ2 .
A3: If Pi cannot move further in the plane (x, y), we move it
along the vertical axis zi keeping (xi , yi ) constant as follows:
if γ(xi , yi , zi ) < 0, we move Pi down, if γ(xi , yi , zi ) > 0, we
move Pi up. So we move Pi until either γ(xi , yi , zi ) = 0 or it
is impossible to continue the trajectory so that the conditions
(1), (2), (3), zi ∈ [Zmin , Zmax ] hold. Then go to A2.
To facilitate the understanding of this algorithm, the pseu-
docode running at each UAV is shown in Algorithm 1. Also,
corresponding to the cases of A2 (i), A2 (ii), A2 (iii), and
(c) (d)
Fig. 3: Several typical situations a UAV may meet during
the movement. (a) When it is at P2 , it is within R2 to Q1
and outside dsaf e to P1 . The shaded area is the set P̂1 , i.e.,
removing the circular area centred at P1 with the radius dsaf e
from D. Thus, the coverage circle is the candidate set to find
the best angle θ0 . (b) When it is on the boundary of P1 , the
candidate set is the semi-circle Θ1 = [0, 0.45π] ∪ [1.45π, 2π).
(c) The UAV is on the boundaries of Q1 and P̂1 . Then, the
candidate for selecting a future moving direction is the green
sector: Θ2 = [0.83π, 1.2π]. (d) When the UAV moves in the
vertical direction, it keeps check the sign of γ(x, y, z) and
it always moves towards the direction such that γ(x, y, z)
becomes closer to 0.
A3, several typical situations a UAV may meet during the
movement are shown in Fig. 3.
Proposition III.2. The algorithm (A1) – (A3) converges to a
stationary point of the constrained optimization problem (10),
(1), (2), (3) and the constraints (1), (2), (3) hold at any point
of the trajectory we build in (A1) – (A3).
Proof. The algorithm (A1) – (A3) generates a trajectory
(P1 , P2 , . . . , Pn ). Since this trajectory is in some compact set
D×[Zmin , Zmax ], it has a subsequence that converges to some
(P10 , P20 , . . . , Pn0 ) [33]. Furthermore, it follows from (A1) –
(A3) that when (P1 , P2 . . . , Pn ) in some small neighbourhood
of (P10 , P20 . . . , Pn0 ), it will reach (P10 , P20 . . . , Pn0 ) and stays
there. Moreover, it is obvious from (A1) – (A3), that it the
trajectory cannot be continued beyond a certain point, then this
point is stationary. When we move Pi , the condition β(θ0 ) ≥ 0
always holds. Therefore, the function (9) is non-decreasing on
the trajectory (P1 , P2 , . . . , Pn ).
More details about the solution to the problem of maxi-
mizing (11) are presented below. According to (7), the term
w0 (dmin
j ) can be expressed as follows:
π π
w0 (dj ) = − sin( dj ), ∀dj ∈ [0, r). (13)
r r

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Algorithm 1 The algorithm running at UAV i.

600
2 4
1: while (1), (2), (3), β(θ0 ) ≥ 0 hold do 6 10
5
11
2: Compute Ph , Qh , and P̂h . 400
7

Y (m)
12
3: if Pi is inside D × zi ∩ Ph ∩ Qh ∩ P̂h then 13 9

4: Find θ0 ∈ [0, 2π) that maximizes (11). 200 1

8
14 4

5: else if Pi is on the boundary of one of the sets D × 1

2 3
3
15
zi , Ph , Qh , P̂h then 0
0 200 400 600 800
6: Find θ0 ∈ Θ1 that maximizes (11). X (m)
7: else if Pi is on the boundary of two or more of the Fig. 4: The area of interest.
sets D × zi , Ph , Qh , P̂h then
8: Find θ0 ∈ Θ2 that maximizes (11).
9: end if
10: Pi moves in the horizontal plane along θ0 for a unit sets of Ph , Qh , and P̂h . Correspondingly, the complexities
distance. are O(n), O(k) and O(n) in the worst case. When the UAV
11: end while is in the case of (i) in A2, it can find the optimal moving
12: while γ(xi , yi , zi ) 6= 0 and (1), (2), (3), zi ∈ direction analytically by solving (14); while when it is in the
[Zmin , Zmax ] hold do cases of either (ii) or (iii) in A2, it needs to check m possible
13: Compute Ph , Qh , and P̂h . angles (if the maximum turning angle of the UAV is 2π m ). Then,
14: if γ(xi , yi , zi ) < 0 then the complexity is either O(1) or O(m). When the UAV is in
15: Pi moves up for a unit distance. A3, to determine the vertical moving direction, it only needs
16: else if γ(xi , yi , zi ) > 0 then to evaluate the sign of (12). Then, the complexity is O(1).
17: Pi moves down for a unit distance. Hence, the overall computational complexity for one UAV is
18: end if either O(3n + k + 1) or O(3n + k + m).
19: end while Although the computational complexity for one UAV is
linearly related to the number of UAVs in the network, it is
worth pointing out that such complexity is for the worst case
Substitute (13) into (11), one obtains: where a UAV receives the broadcast from all the other UAVs.
In practice, the UAVs that are too far away from a UAV will
π X π
β(θ) = sin( dj ) cos(θj − θ) not impact its movement decision; while only those which are
r r connected with this UAV in the communication graph G and
j∈Ui
π X π those which are within dsaf e influence its future movement.
= sin( dj )(cos(θ) cos(θj ) + sin(θ) sin(θj ))
r r In other words, a UAV makes movement decision only based
j∈Ui
π X on the measured locations of targets and some nearby UAVs’
= φj cos(θ) + ψj sin(θ) positions no matter how many UAVs the network has. In
r
j∈Ui practice, a threshold can be applied, such that if the received
= Φ cos(θ) + Ψ sin(θ) signal at a UAV is below this threshold, it will be ignored.
p
= Φ2 + Ψ2 cos(θ − ϑ). (14)
IV. S IMULATIONS
where φjP= sin( πr dj ) cos(θj ), ψP π j
j = sin( r d ) sin(θj ), The performance of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated
π π
Φ = r j∈Ui φj , and Ψ = r j∈Ui ψj . If Φ 6= 0, by computer simulations carried out with Matlab.
ϑ = tan−1 ( Ψ π
Φ ) + mπ; otherwise, ϑ = sign(Ψ) 2 + mπ, where We consider an area with the size of 800 m by 600 m as
sign(Ψ) = 1, if Ψ > 0; sign(Ψ) = −1, otherwise. Notice shown in Fig. 4. In this area, there are four GNs located at the
that the value of integer m depends on the signs of Φ and Ψ, corners (marked by black squares). There are totally 15 depots,
and should make ϑ ∈ [0, 2π) hold. each of which stores one UAV (marked by green circles). The
So far, how UAVs should move in the plane (x, y) is topology of a given communication graph G is also shown in
determined by the solution to a simple one variable equation Fig. 4, where the UAV-GN link is shown by the blue dash
(14). If the UAV i is in the case of (i) of A2, i.e., the possible lines and the UAV-UAV link is shown by the red solid lines.
directions θ ∈ [0, 2π), one can obtain the solution θ0 = ϑ; The UAV deployment region D is an ellipse represented by
otherwise, in the case of (ii) or (iii) of A2, UAV i needs to the black solid line and the area has two holes shaded by the
choose θ0 from the candidate sectors to maximize (14), which blue solid lines where UAVs cannot fly. The system parameters
is also easy to solve. Thus, the control input applied to the are specified as follows: Zmin = 50 m and Zmax = 250 m,
UAV i is u = [cos(θ0 ) sin(θ0 )]0 . R1 = 400 m, R2 = 350 m, dsf ae = 30 m, α = π2 and every
Finally, the complexity of the proposed algorithm is anal- movement in both horizontal and vertical directions is 1 m.
ysed. At each UAV, the proposed algorithm repeats every a Firstly, the simulation result with 15 UAVs is demonstrated.
certain period of time and such a period is consistent with There are 200 targets randomly deployed in the area and they
that of broadcasting its current position. In each period, it may be outside D, see Fig. 5a. The initial positions of the
receives at most n − 1 messages including the positions of UAVs are the locations of the depots as shown in Fig. 4 and
other UAVs. The complexity is O(n). Then, it computes the the initial altitudes are all 100 m. Fig. 5a shows how these 15

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800 2 4 Zmax 600 2 4

250 1.35
6 6

Quality of coverage ( W)
10 10
5 5
11 11
7 200

Altitude (m)
7
600 400
Y (m)

1.3

Y (m)
12 13 9 12 13 9
150

400 14 4 4
1 200 1 14
8 100
8
1.25
2 3 Zmin
2 3
15 50 15
200 1 3
0 1 3
200 400 600 800 0 100 200 300 400 0 200 400 600 800 0 20 40 60
X (m) Step X (m) Step

(a) (b) (a) (b)

2 600 2 4
1.4
400
Quality of coverage (W)

Quality of coverage ( W)
10
1.8 5
11 1.35
300 7
Distance (m)

max linked UAV-GN 400

1.6 max linked UAV-UAV

Y (m)
12 13 9
200 min UAV-UAV 1.3
1.4 min UAV-boundary
200 14 4
100 1
8 1.25
1.2
2 3
0 15
1 0 1 3
1.2
0 100 200 300 400 0 100 200 300 400 0 200 400 600 800 0 200 400 600
Step Step X (m) Step

(c) (d) (c) (d)

Fig. 5: Simulation result with 15 UAVs. (a) The horizontal Fig. 7: Simulation results by the baseline method. (a) The
movement. (b) The vertical movement. (c) The QoC. (d) horizontal movement for the static target case. (b) The QoC
Maximum linked UAV-GN distance, maximum linked UAV- for the mobile target case. (c) The horizontal movement for
UAV distance, minimum UAV-UAV distance, and minimum the static target case. (d) The QoC for the mobile target case.
UAV-boundary distance.

records several distance metrics during the movement. It is

800 2 4 Z max
6
10
250 clear that the maximum distance between any pair of linked
5
7
11 UAVs does not exceed R1 , the maximum distance between
Altitude (m)

600 200
any pair of linked UAV and GN does not exceed R2 , the
Y (m)

12 13 9
150
400 1 14 4 minimum distance between any pair of UAVs is always larger
8 100
than dsaf e , and the minimum distance from UAVs to boundary
2 3 Z min
200 1
15
3 50 D is always no smaller than 0.
200 400 600 800 0 200 400 600
X (m) Step Furthermore, we demonstrate the simulation result for the
(a) (b)
above case but the targets are mobile. In particular, each target
1.8
randomly selects one moving direction and when it meets the
400 boundary of the area, it changes a direction rather than leaving
Quality of Coverage (W)

1.6 300 max linked UAV-GN the area. Any movement is bounded by 0.5 m. The simulation
Distance (m)

max linked UAV-UAV

1.4
1.2
0 150 300
Step
(c)
Fig. 6: Simulation results with 15 UAVs for the case with
mobile targets. (a) UAVs’ trajectories. (b) UAVs’ altitudes. (c)
The QoC. (d) Maximum linked UAV-GN distance, maximum
linked UAV-UAV distance, minimum UAV-UAV distance, and
minimum UAV-boundary distance.
UAVs move (indicated by the red solid lines). It can be seen
the UAVs neither enter the holes nor cross the boundary of D.
The altitudes of the UAVs during the movements are shown
in Fig. 5b. The QoC of the network is shown in 5c. The QoC
keeps increasing with step and the network converges in about
360 steps. The final positions of UAVs increase the QoC by
58% compared to the initial positions. Furthermore, Fig. 5d
200
min UAV-UAV result for this case is shown in Fig. 6. Different from the
min UAV-boundary
situation with static targets, the positions of UAVs may not
100
converge to some positions. Thus, we consider running the
0
simulation for 600 steps. Besides, the QoC is not guaranteed
450 600 0 150 300 450 600
Step
to increase all the time, see Fig. 6c. The reason lies in the
movement of targets. However, the proposed algorithm is
(d)
able to lead the UAVs to some positions where better QoC
can be achieved. Similar to the above case, all the links are
guaranteed, any pair of UAVs keep away from each other, and
no UAVs leave the deployment region D.
To better assess the performance of the proposed approach, a
baseline method in [18] is considered for comparison. In [18],
UAVs are deployed at the same altitude and each UAV moves
towards the centre of mass of its covered targets. Here, the
altitude of UAVs is set as the middle of the allowed deployed
space, i.e., 150 m. The simulation results for both the static
targets and mobile targets are shown in Fig. 7, where the
movements of UAVs are shown in Fig. 7a and 7c, and the
QoCs are shown in Fig. 7b and 7d. For the static case, although
the compared method converges faster, the proposed approach
outperforms of the compared one by about 35% in terms of the

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Proposed, static targets
Compared, static targets
Quality of coverage ( W)
Proposed, mobile targets
1.5
Compared, mobile targets
1 the performance of the algorithm.
0.5
0
5 10
Number of UAVs
Fig. 8: Average final QoC in cases with static targets and
average approximate final QoC in cases with mobile targets.
QoC. Since the compared method is not aiming at improving
QoC, instead its objective is to reduce the average UAV-target
distance, the resulting QoC does not increase with step like the
proposed algorithm shown in Fig. 5c. For the mobile case, the
proposed algorithm outperforms the compared one by about
25% in QoC.
Moreover, the proposed algorithm and that of [18] are also
applied to the cases with other numbers of UAVs. In each of
these cases, the UAVs’ initial positions are selected from the
depots as shown in Fig. 4. Also, the connectivity requirement
should be satisfied at any UAV. In other words, if one depot
is selected, the parent depot should be selected as well. For
instance, the depot with the index of 13 can only be used if and
only if the one indexed by 11 is selected. For a certain number
of UAVs, there are some different and feasible topologies. We
randomly pick 10 topologies to conduct the below simulations
and the results shown below are the best one among these 10
topologies. We mainly pay attention to the metrics of the final
QoC in the cases with static targets and the approximate final
QoC in the cases with mobile targets. The second metric is the
average QoC of last 300 steps out of the overall 600 steps. In
the cases with static targets, the targets are randomly deployed.
To mitigate the influence of the randomness, 10 simulations
are conducted and the final QoC in each case is the averaged
value. In the cases with mobile targets, the mobility model is
consistent with the above case. Also 10 simulations are run
and the approximate final QoC in each case is the averaged
value.
The number of UAVs is set from 5 to 15 and the com-
parisons are displayed in Fig. 8. It is clear that the proposed
algorithm achieves better final QoC in the cases with static
targets and approximate final QoC in the cases with mobile
targets, and in both situations, the former outperforms the latter
by about 20%-35%. Also we can see that with the increase
of the number of UAVs, the gain achieved by the proposed
algorithm against the compared tends to be larger. In other
words, for the scenarios where more UAVs are available, the
proposed method provides much better QoC.
V. C ONCLUSION
The paper considered to use a network of UAVs for surveil-
lance purpose. A novel coverage model was proposed, which
characterizes the QoC of a target by the UAVs. Based on this
model, a reactive collision free 3D deployment algorithm was
developed. Aiming at maximizing the overall QoC of targets,
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8
this algorithm consists of two navigation laws for horizontal
sub-movement and vertical sub-movement. The convergence
of this algorithm was proved. Simulation results demonstrated
Since the UAVs may operate at different altitudes, their
energy consumptions may be different as well. Considering
the fact that commercial UAVs are now usually powered
15
by batteries with limited capacity, combining some energy
consumption model with the proposed coverage model is a
promising way to improve the UAV network operation and an
important direction for future work.
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Hailong Huang was born in China in 1988. He

received the B.Sc. degree in automation, from China
University of Petroleum, Beijing, China, in 2012,
and received Ph.D degree in Systems and Control
from the University of New South Wales, Sydney,
Australia, in 2018. He is a research associate at
the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecom-
munications, University of New South Wales, Syd-
ney, Australia. His current research interests include
wireless sensor networks, networking protocols, and
guidance, navigation, and control of mobile robots.

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