U-Mesh + : Terrain-Aware, Robust, and Cost-Efficient UAV-Mesh Network Deployment for Inspection Tasks in Remote Areas

Powerline inspection with UAVs significantly improves efficiency and safety in remote areas. However, the lack of cellular infrastructure necessitates the use of UAV-mesh networks, whose deployment presents challenges in jointly optimizing coverage, node load, robustness, and cost under complex terrain constraints. In this paper, we investigate the computational complexity of this deployment problem by formulating it as a multi-objective optimization task and proving its NP-hardness. To address this, we presentU-Mesh+, aterrain-aware, robust, and cost-efficientdeployment framework that integrates four key components: (i) identifying line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight links to model terrain-induced communication constraints; (ii)NetConsfor cost-effective coverage and connectivity network topology construction; (iii)NetOptfor network resilience and balance node-level load improvement without extra cost; and (iv)NetEnhfor service availability enhancement via targeted local refinements. We implementU-Mesh+in a real-world 270km2mountainous forest with 174 power towers and 48km of transmission lines. Extensive experiments demonstrate its efficacy in terms of deployment cost and network performance. On-site network data from the deployed wireless network further validate its effectiveness and scalability under real-world conditions.