Distributed Formation Control and Communication Resilience in Autonomous Drone Swarms

Abstract

Autonomous drone swarms offer considerable potential for coordinated surveillance, environmental monitoring, infrastructure inspection, and emergency response, yet their operational dependability remains constrained by the interaction between formation control and wireless communication. This review critically examines the architectures, coordination algorithms, networking mechanisms, and resilience strategies that underpin collective aerial operations. Drawing on published research through 2023, it adopts a thematic literature synthesis covering decentralised swarm organisation, leader–follower and virtual-structure control, consensus protocols, distributed predictive control, inter-drone connectivity, fault accommodation, and collision avoidance. The analysis indicates that no single formation-control strategy consistently satisfies the competing demands of scalability, tracking precision, computational efficiency, and resilience. Consensus-based approaches support local coordination, while predictive and adaptive methods accommodate selected dynamic constraints; however, their effectiveness depends on communication topology, state-estimation quality, and controller assumptions. Intermittent links, packet loss, latency, sensor and actuator faults, and changing network configurations can degrade formation accuracy and compromise mission continuity. Fault estimation, event-triggered communication, adaptive routing, and safety-constrained control offer complementary responses, although robust performance under simultaneous disturbances remains insufficiently demonstrated in realistic field conditions. Evidence from practical aerial applications further highlights the need to evaluate collective performance against operational outcomes rather than isolated algorithmic measures. The review concludes that dependable swarm autonomy requires integrated design of flight control, networking, safety assurance, and system monitoring. It recommends standardised benchmarks encompassing formation error, connectivity, recovery time, collision risk, energy consumption, and mission completion, alongside expanded hardware-in-the-loop testing, outdoor multi-drone experiments, cybersecurity assessment, and validation under heterogeneous operating conditions. Particular attention should also be given to regulatory compliance, interoperability, and transparent reporting of experimental limitations.