Collecting Sensor Data from WSNs on the Ground by UAVs: Assessing Mismatches from Real-World Experiments and Their Corresponding Simulations

摘要

Communication approaches for autonomous robots in surveillance missions, remotely acting or collecting point-of-interest data, are widely researched. In this line of research, most works address the use of unmanned aerial vehicles because of the mobility flexibility of these vehicles to cover an area. However, these proposals are verified almost exclusively through network simulations. Simulations are efficient for speeding up experiments. In most cases, most experiments are simulated because of the difficulty of validating a proposal in the real world. Real-world experiences are doubly important because they provide much more robust validation to the proposals, real-world tests can be compared to simulated tests, and the gaps between the results can be used to enrich simulated environments that will be used for validations without real-world tests. In this line, this paper presents tests performed in simulated and real-world environments, compares the results of both experiments and presents how enhancement can be applied.