Energy Relay-Enhanced UAV Data Collection: A Case Study of Wildlife Monitoring Application

Wildlife data collection is a critical means for the sustainable development and conservation of wildlife resources. In recent years, an increasing number of studies have utilized wireless sensor networks for wildlife data collection. However, communication within widely dispersed sensor networks poses challenges. In this regard, this paper first proposes the use of drone as a data collector in wireless sensor networks, with the limited energy supply of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) as a constraint, and considers the deployment of energy supply points for replenishment, while the cost and revenue of each sensor monitoring point are a priori unknown. This paper proposes a two-stage solution for energy relay-enhanced UAV search planning based on wireless sensor networks. Initially, offline path planning for the UAV is conducted to traverse all sensor monitoring points. Subsequently, an online linear programming phase determines whether the UAV should collect sensor data or perform energy replenishment. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed approach is validated through experiments conducted on a real-world monitoring dataset from the Qilian Mountains.