Data Collection from Outdoor IoT 802.15.4 Sensor Networks using Unmanned Aerial Systems

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) are a promising technology for data collection from outdoor sensor networks. Environmental and agricultural networks may not have existing internet backhauls for data delivery due to low population densities in rural areas, making UASs a potential data delivery alternative. UASs can be deployed as aerial network relay nodes [1, 2, 3, 4] or as data mules [5, 6]. In addition to mending network fragmentation, UAS applications include post-disaster data collection involving inoperative communication infrastructure [7, 8, 9], supplementing existing communication in- frastructure for vehicular networks [10], and rural applications in environmental monitoring [11, 12] and precision agriculture [13, 14].