A Multi-CUAV Multi-UAV Electricity Scheduling Scheme: From Charging Location Selection to Electricity Transaction

In unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) performing tasks, the UAV often faces electricity shortages. The traditional scheme to charge a UAV needs to return to the ground. Using the charging UAV (CUAV) can avoid the waste of electricity caused by the return. However, the existing works only consider a fixed charging location for electricity replenishment. Moreover, fewer works focus on the matching relationship between multi-CUAV and multi-UAV. It is challenging to complete the expected charging work due to the mismatch between the electricity demand and supply. To address this problem, we propose a two-stage electricity scheduling scheme. Specifically, in the charging location selection stage, we solve the Nash equilibrium (NE) of flight consumption between CUAVs and UAVs through the exact potential game, thereby determining the accessible charging position. Then, in the electricity transaction stage, we adopt the Stackelberg game model to determine the Stackelberg equilibrium (SE) between the acceptance rate of CUAVs and the rejection rate of UAVs, ensuring that both CUAVs and UAVs are satisfied with the unit electricity prices and electricity demands. Based on the above two game stages, we propose a supply and demand scheduling (SDS) algorithm to achieve dynamic scheduling between CUAVs and UAVs. Theoretical analysis indicates the exits of NE and SE. Furthermore, the extensive experiments show that our scheme has significant advantages over the baselines in charging cost, charging price, and flight consumption.