Precise Time Synchronisation for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Cluster Through Time‐Varying Topology Aggregation

ABSTRACT

The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) cluster can accomplish complex tasks that a single platform cannot handle. Precise time synchronisation among the nodes in a formation flight of a UAV cluster is an essential foundation for resource scheduling, cooperative positioning and data fusion. The connectivity of the time comparison link exhibits time‐varying characteristics, which pose a challenge to the realisation of continuous high‐precision time synchronisation. This letter proposes a precise time synchronisation scheme based on time‐varying topology aggregation for a UAV cluster and an adaptive clock skew exchange protocol was designed to enable each node to achieve leader‐following consistency time synchronisation in the optimal path through edge computing. This method can achieve synchronisation accuracy better than 10ns and can provide support for collaborative applications of a UAV cluster.