Autonomous routing and power management of drones in gps-denied environments through dijkstra algorithm

Navigation of drones in GPS-denied environments, such as subways, tunnels, and underground mines is challenging. Generally, drones with non-optimized flight pattern in these environments consume a lot more power than the required power. Finding the shortest and safest path between each pair of source/destination is the objective of any efficient navigation systems. In this study, the specific shapes of the subways and tunnels are modeled as network graphs. In these tunnel network environments, each drone are considered as traffic packets like data networks. Routing drones in each network cross section need router systems in each tunnel cross sections. Routers have global network information through their interconnections and open shortest path first protocol. Given the global network information in each router, Dijkstra algorithm is deployed to find the shortest path from each source/destination pair. It is shown that Dijkstra algorithm achieves the minimum distance between any pair of subway stations. Therefore, the minimum required energy can be achieved to fly from each pair of stations in any traffic distribution moments.