Determination of minimum number of UAVs for local area networks of drones

There are many applications of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) networks where all UAVs belong to one organization or a person. In such applications, the number of UAVs that can be employed is limited due to the cost factor. Local Area Networks of Drones (LoDs) have been introduced recently for such purposes. This paper presents methods of determining the minimum number of UAVs to perform tasks in four basic categories of LoD applications: completing a single task at a time, completing multiple tasks simultaneously, monitoring the entire area using a single UAV branch and monitoring the entire area simultaneously using multiple branches of UAVs. Completing one task at a time always requires a minimum number of UAVs and increasing the number of simultaneous tasks performed always increases the number of UAVs required for any application.