An Efficient Wideband Spectrum Sensing Algorithm for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Communication Networks

With increasingly smaller size, more powerful sensing capabilities and higher level of autonomy, multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can form UAV networks to collaboratively complete missions more reliably, efficiently and economically. While UAV networks are promising for many applications, there are many outstanding issues to be resolved before large scale UAV networks are practically used. In this paper we study the application of cognitive radio technology for UAV communication networks, to provide high capacity and reliable communication with opportunistic and timely spectrum access. Compressive sensing is applied in the cognitive radio to boost the performance of spectrum sensing. However, the performance of existing compressive spectrum sensing schemes is constrained with non-strictly sparse spectrum. In addition, the reconstruction process applied in existing schemes has unnecessarily high computational complexity and low energy efficiency. We proposed a new compressive signal processing algorithm, called Iterative Compressive Filtering, to improve the UAV network communication performance. The key idea is using orthogonal projection as a bandstop filter in compressive domain. The components of primary users (PUs) in the recognized subchannels are adaptively eliminated in compressive domain, which can directly update the measurement for further detection of other active users. Experiment results showed increased efficiency of the proposed algorithm over existing compressive spectrum sensing algorithms. The proposed algorithm achieved higher detection probability in identifying the occupied subchannels under the condition of non-strictly sparse spectrum with large computational complexity reduction, which can provide strong support of reliable and timely communication for UAV networks

Wideband Spectrum Acquisition for UAV Swarm Using the Sparse Coding Fourier Transform

As the trend towards small, safe, smart, speedy and swarm development grows, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are becoming increasingly popular for a wide range of applications. In this letter, the challenge of wideband spectrum acquisition for the UAV swarms is studied by proposing a processing method that features lower power consumption, higher compression rates, and a lower signal-to-noise ratio. Our system is equipped with multiple UAVs, each with a different sub-sampling rate. That allows for frequency backetization and estimation based on sparse Fourier transform theory. Unlike other techniques, the collisions and iterations caused by non-sparsity environ-ments are considered. We introduce sparse coding Fourier transform to address these issues. The key is to code the entire spectrum and decode it through spectrum correlation in the code. Simulation results show that our proposed method performs well in acquiring both narrowband and wideband signals simultaneously, compared to the other methods

Distributed UAV Swarm Augmented Wideband Spectrum Sensing Using Nyquist Folding Receiver

Distributed unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms are formed by multiple UAVs with increased portability, higher levels of sensing capabilities, and more powerful autonomy. These features make them attractive for many recent applica-tions, potentially increasing the shortage of spectrum resources. In this paper, wideband spectrum sensing augmented technology is discussed for distributed UAV swarms to improve the utilization of spectrum. However, the sub-Nyquist sampling applied in existing schemes has high hardware complexity, power consumption, and low recovery efficiency for non-strictly sparse conditions. Thus, the Nyquist folding receiver (NYFR) is considered for the distributed UAV swarms, which can theoretically achieve full-band spectrum detection and reception using a single analog-to-digital converter (ADC) at low speed for all circuit components. There is a focus on the sensing model of two multichannel scenarios for the distributed UAV swarms, one with a complete functional receiver for the UAV swarm with RIS, and another with a decentralized UAV swarm equipped with a complete functional receiver for each UAV element. The key issue is to consider whether the application of RIS technology will bring advantages to spectrum sensing and the data fusion problem of decentralized UAV swarms based on the NYFR architecture. Therefore, the property for multiple pulse reconstruction is analyzed through the Gershgorin circle theorem, especially for very short pulses. Further, the block sparse recovery property is analyzed for wide bandwidth signals. The proposed technology can improve the processing capability for multiple signals and wide bandwidth signals while reducing interference from folded noise and subsampled harmonics. Experiment results show augmented spectrum sensing efficiency under non-strictly sparse conditions

Time allocation optimization and trajectory design in UAV-assisted energy and spectrum harvesting network

The scarcity of energy resources and spectrum resources has become an urgent problem with the exponential increase of communication devices. Meanwhile, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is widely used to help communication network recently due to its maneuverability and flexibility. In this paper, we consider a UAV-assisted energy and spectrum harvesting (ESH) network to better solve the spectrum and energy scarcity problem, where nearby secondary users (SUs) harvest energy from the base station (BS) and perform data transmission to the BS, while remote SUs harvest energy from both BS and UAV but only transmit data to UAV to reduce the influence of near-far problem. We propose an unaligned time allocation scheme (UTAS) in which the uplink phase and downlink phase of nearby SUs and remote SUs are unaligned to achieve more flexible time schedule, including schemes (a) and (b) in remote SUs due to the half-duplex of energy harvesting circuit. In addition, maximum throughput optimization problems are formulated for nearby SUs and remote SUs respectively to find the optimal time allocation. The optimization problem can be divided into three cases according to the relationship between practical data volume and theoretical throughput to avoid the waste of time resource. The expressions of optimal energy harvesting time and data transmission time of each node are derived. Lastly, a successive convex approximation based iterative algorithm (SCAIA) is designed to get the optimal UAV trajectory in broadcast mode. Simulation results show that the proposed UTAS can achieve better performance than traditional time allocation schemes