  The communication energy in a wireless network of mobile autonomous agents
should be defined to include the propulsion energy as well as the transmission
energy used to facilitate information transfer. We therefore develop
communicationtheoretic and Newtonian dynamic models of the communication and
locomotion expenditures of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). These models are
used to formulate a novel nonlinear optimal control problem (OCP) for arbitrary
networks of autonomous agents. This is the first work to consider mobility as a
decision variable in UAV networks with multiple access channels. Where
possible, we compare our results with known analytic solutions for particular
single-hop network configurations. The OCP is then applied to a multiple-node
UAV network for which previous results cannot be readily extended. Numerical
results demonstrate increased network capacity and communication energy savings
upwards of 70% when compared to more naive communication policies.
