Aircraft Parking Trajectory Planning in Semistructured Environment Based on Kinodynamic Safety RRT ∗

To improve the safety and effectiveness of autonomous towing aircraft aboard the carrier deck, this study proposes a velocity-restricted path planner algorithm named as kinodynamic safety optimal rapidly exploring random tree (KS-RRT ∗ ) to plan a near time-optimal path. First, a speed map is introduced to assign different maximum allowable velocity for the sampling points in the workspace, and the traverse time is calculated along the kinodynamic connection of two sampling points. Then the near time-optimal path in the tree-structured search map can be obtained by the rewiring procedures, instead of a distance-optimal path in the original RRT ∗ algorithm. In order to enhance the planner’s performance, goal biasing scheme and fast collision checking technique are adopted in the algorithm. Since the sampling-based methods are sensitive to their parameters, simulation experiments are first conducted to determine the optimal input settings for the specific problem. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is validated in several common aircraft parking scenarios. Comparing with standard RRT ∗ and human heuristic driving, KS-RRT ∗ demonstrates a higher success rate, as well as shorter computation and trajectory time. In conclusion, KS-RRT ∗ algorithm is suitable to generate a near time-optimal safe path for autonomous high density parking in semistructured environment.

Throughput of distributed queueing-based LoRa for long-distance communication

LoRa, due to its advantage of long-range communication capability, is promising for Internet of Things (IoT) and space-air-ground communications. However, the conventional MAC protocol used with LoRa is classified as an Aloha-based algorithm, which leads to drastic decrease in throughput when a huge amount of end-devices try to access the network. To achieve stable and high throughput of LoRa, we propose a design to combine the distributed queueing (DQ) and in-band-full-duplex (IBFD) technologies. The usage of DQ mechanism is benefit for fast collision resolution, while the IBFD-enabled gateway helps to reduce the heavy control overhead of DQ. The designs of access procedure and frame structure are discussed in detail. The outage probability and average throughput are evaluated under imperfect self-interference cancelation. Also, a mathematical programming method is developed to optimize the spreading factor and code rate. Numerical results show that our proposal gains an extra enhancement of 1.83-fold in throughput.

Collision-induced amplitude dynamics of fast 2D solitons in the presence of the generic nonlinear loss

We study the amplitude dynamics of two-dimensional (2D) solitons in a fast collision described by the coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations with a saturable nonlinearity and weak nonlinear loss. We extend the perturbative technique for calculating the collision-induced dynamics of two one-dimensional (1D) solitons to derive the theoretical expression for the collision-induced amplitude dynamics in a fast collision of two 2D solitons. Our perturbative approach is based on two major steps. The first step is the standard adiabatic perturbation for the calculations on the energy balance of perturbed solitons and the second step, which is the crucial one, is for the analysis of the collision-induced change in the envelope of the perturbed 2D soliton. Furthermore, we also present the dependence of the collision-induced amplitude shift on the angle of the two 2D colliding-solitons. In addition, we show that the current perturbative technique can be simply applied to study the collision-induced amplitude shift in a fast collision of two perturbed 1D solitons. Our analytic calculations are confirmed by numerical simulations with the corresponding coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations in the presence of the cubic loss and in the presence of the quintic loss.