Coalition Game Based Distributed Clustering Approach for Group Oriented Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Networks

Clustering is an effective solution to improve the management efficiency of large-scale systems. One one hand, UAVs performing the same task have a similar moving tendency. One the other hand, the network topology of the UAV swarms is dynamically changing. Considering the above two aspects, our main contributrons are designing a group-oriented distributed clustering algorithm based on the coalition game that couples task attributes and communication attributes. The clustering goal is to divide UAVs performing the same task into one cluster and make each cluster have more UAVs under the cluster size limits, thus improving communication efficiency. The proposed algorithm comprehensively considers the task group information and communication link stability as the coalition value. UAVs decide whether to leave their current coalition based on coalition values. Through periodic parallel switch operations selection, UAVs are divided into the desired clustering structure. Simulations verify that our clustering algorithm is effective and better than the existing ones, especially in communication link stability, cluster numbers, and load balance.