For the past decade, the Marine Corps has been able to assume uncontested use of the electromagnetic spectrum, and its command and control systems reflect this assumption. It must prepare for when this is not the case by developing a system designed to operate in contested electromagnetic environments. Previous work by the Australian Defence Science and Technology Group researchers on delay-tolerant networking using a UAV swarm as communication ferry nodes provides one solution. They achieve even dispersion through speed adjustments on unidirectional data ferries traversing the polygon formed by ground node locations based on digital pheromone values. This thesis builds upon their work by developing a method to evenly disperse ferry nodes traveling both clockwise and counterclockwise without inter-UAV communication. This reduces the primary disadvantage of delay tolerant networking, the message delivery delay. Unlike the single-direction system, this even dispersion is periodic because the ferry nodes approach one another after reaching even dispersion before reaching even dispersion once again after passing. Due to this, only one ground node in the system should link the two directional pheromones. We found that multiple adjusting ground nodes attempt to pull the system into contradictory equilibrium states. We have verified this concept in simulation and integrated it with the NPS ARSENL program for future testing.

Subjects: swarming; UAVs; stigmergy; command and control; delay tolerant networking; swarm intelligence; emergence; data ferrying; digital pheromones