Multi-Channel Utilization for Local Data Sharing in Multi-Layered Wireless Robotic Networks

Abstract

The advances of cloud and edge computing allow networked robots to acquire supporting information anywhere. Meanwhile, cloud and edge computing give rise to a large amount of data information for user to acquire. This leads to a challenging issue for wireless networks because radio resources is limited. To accommodate a number of robots that download map information from wireless LANs (WLANs), it is important for a robotic wireless network (RWN) to improve the efficiency of using wireless resources. The objective of this paper is to investigate how to efficiently use multiple wireless channels for a multi-layered RWN, which employs local data sharing among robots to save wireless resource consumption. Based on the hierarchical structure of multi-layered RWN, we proposed a multi-channel utilization scheme for local data delivery in robot clusters. The joint design of local data sharing via robot clustering and multi-channel utilization increases the available wireless resources for accommodating of the increasing number of service robots. Quantitative analysis results illustrate that the proposed channel separation-and-sharing system increases significantly the capability of robot accommodation and improve the channel availability. Furthermore, the preliminary experiment results confirm the functionality of the proposed system.