Improved method for subsystems performance trade-off in system-of-systems oriented design of UAV swarms

For the rapidly developing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm, the system-of-systems (SoS) oriented design is a prospective conceptual design methodology due to the competence for complex mission requirements and subsystems interactions. In the SoS oriented design, the subsystems performance trade-off is the basis of design decisions. In the trade-off for surveillance missions, most previous works do not consider track reporting and mainly focus on the design of platforms. An improved method for the subsystems performance trade-off in the SoS oriented UAV swarm design is proposed. Within an improved design framework with subsystems disaggregation, this method is characterized by treating platforms, sensors, and communications as equally important subsystems, integrating operational strategies into the trade-off, and enabling the trade-off for track reporting. Those advantages are achieved by a behavior-based modular model structure for agent-based operational modeling and simulation. In addition, a method of analyzing the bounds of the communication range is also presented. Simulation experiments are conducted by using precision-based simulation replication rules and surrogate modeling methods. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, and show that the configuration of area partitioning changes the trade space of subsystems performances, indicating the necessity of integrating operational strategies into the conceptual design.