Journal of Systems Engineering and Electronics ›› 2019, Vol. 30 ›› Issue (4): 720-737.doi: 10.21629/JSEE.2019.04.10

• Systems Engineering • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Improved method for subsystems performance trade-off in system-of-systems oriented design of UAV swarms

Ruiwen ZHANG(), Bifeng SONG(), Yang PEI*(), Qijia YUN()   

  • Received:2018-08-13 Online:2019-08-01 Published:2019-09-01
  • Contact: Yang PEI E-mail:zhangrwchina@163.com;bfsong@nwpu.edu.cn;yang@nwpu.edu.cn;605105764@qq.com
  • About author:ZHANG Ruiwen was born in 1991. He received his B.S. degree in aircraft design from Northwestern Polytechnical University in 2013. Currently, he pursuits his Ph.D. degree in aircraft design at Northwestern Polytechnical University. His research interests include aircraft conceptual design, agentbased modeling and simulation, combat effectiveness analysis, and multi-agent systems. E-mail:zhangrwchina@163.com|SONG Bifeng was born in 1963. He received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in aircraft design from Northwestern Polytechnical University in 1985, 1988 and 1998, respectively. Currently, he is a professor and doctoral supervisor at Northwestern Polytechnical University, the distinguished professor as "Chang Jiang scholars program" of Ministry of Education in aircraft design disciplines, and the chief scientist of 973 projects. His research interests include aircraft multidisciplinary design optimization and the top decision-making technology, micro aircraft design, airship design, high survivability and reliability technology, as well as aircraft maintainability and supportability engineering. E-mail:bfsong@nwpu.edu.cn|PEI Yang was born in 1978. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in aircraft design from Northwestern Polytechnical University in 2000, 2003 and 2006, respectively. Currently, he is a professor and doctoral supervisor at Northwestern Polytechnical University. His research interests include aircraft conceptual design, target damage assessment, aircraft survivability design, as well as aircraft effectiveness and cost analysis. E-mail:peiyang yang@nwpu.edu.cn|YUN Qijia was born in 1990. He received his B.S. degree in aircraft design from Northwestern Polytechnical University in 2013. Currently, He pursuits his Ph.D. degree in aircraft design at Northwestern Polytechnical University. His research interests include aircraft conceptual design, combat modeling and simulation, and combat effectiveness analysis. E-mail:605105764@qq.com
  • Supported by:
    the National Natural Science Foundation of China(11872314);the National Key Research and Development Program of China(2017YFB1300102);This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11872314), and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFB1300102)

Abstract:

For the rapidly developing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm, the system-of-systems (SoS) oriented design is a prospective conceptual design methodology due to the competence for complex mission requirements and subsystems interactions. In the SoS oriented design, the subsystems performance trade-off is the basis of design decisions. In the trade-off for surveillance missions, most previous works do not consider track reporting and mainly focus on the design of platforms. An improved method for the subsystems performance trade-off in the SoS oriented UAV swarm design is proposed. Within an improved design framework with subsystems disaggregation, this method is characterized by treating platforms, sensors, and communications as equally important subsystems, integrating operational strategies into the trade-off, and enabling the trade-off for track reporting. Those advantages are achieved by a behavior-based modular model structure for agent-based operational modeling and simulation. In addition, a method of analyzing the bounds of the communication range is also presented. Simulation experiments are conducted by using precision-based simulation replication rules and surrogate modeling methods. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, and show that the configuration of area partitioning changes the trade space of subsystems performances, indicating the necessity of integrating operational strategies into the conceptual design.

Key words: swarm, system-of-systems (SoS), trade-off, agent, area partitioning