Constrained Antenna Selection and Beam Pointing Control for Directional Flying Ad Hoc Networks

With the increasing complexity of the space electromagnetic environment, traditional omnidirectional antenna-aided communication and networking techniques can no longer meet the collaboration requirements of aircraft clusters. To achieve goals such as anti-jamming, anti-interception, and enhanced spatial multiplexing, an increasing number of aircraft are being equipped with high-gain directional antennas. However, modeling of directional antenna-constrained Flying Ad Hoc Networks (FANETs) is far more complex than modeling of omnidirectional antenna-aided networks. The former task is highly dependent on the real-time flight state and the spatial topology of the network. In response to the communication challenges posed by directional networking of highly-dynamic aircraft clusters, this study proposes an antenna selection and beam pointing control algorithm, which is deeply integrated with the aircraft's Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) system. By introducing parameters that characterize dynamic flight state, such as position and attitude information, and combining them with high-precision multi-coordinate system transformations and spatial geometric analysis methods, the proposed algorithm enables the real-time optimization of antenna selection and beam pointing under the relative motion trends of aircraft. It effectively maintains high-quality connections between flying nodes. Digital simulation and physical experiment results demonstrate that the proposed method can accurately calculate the appropriate antenna selection and determine precise beam pointing directions based on the position data of flying nodes. This provides an important reference for the design of optimized communication strategies used in directional networking of highly-dynamic aircraft clusters.