  Communication energy in a wireless network of mobile autonomous agents should
be considered as the sum of transmission energy and propulsion energy used to
facilitate the transfer of information. Accordingly, communication-theoretic
and Newtonian dynamic models are developed to model the communication and
locomotion expenditures of each node. These are subsequently used to formulate
a novel nonlinear optimal control problem (OCP) over a network of autonomous
nodes. It is then shown that, under certain conditions, the OCP can be
transformed into an equivalent convex form. Numerical results for a single link
between a node and access point allow for comparison with known solutions
before the framework is applied to a multiple-node UAV network, for which
previous results are not readily extended. Simulations show that transmission
energy can be of the same order of magnitude as propulsion energy allowing for
possible savings, whilst also exemplifying how speed adaptations together with
power control may increase the network throughput.
