Group Handover for Drone-Mounted Base Stations

The widespread use of new technologies such as the Internet of things (IoT) and machine type communication(MTC) forces an increase on the number of user equipments(UEs) and MTC devices that are connecting to mobile networks. Inherently, as the number of UEs inside a base station's (BS) coverage area surges, the quality of service (QoS) tends to decline. The use of drone-mounted BS (UxNB) is a solution in places where UEs are densely populated, such as stadiums. UxNB emerges as a promising technology that can be used for capacity injection purposes in the future due to its fast deployment. However, this emerging technology introduces a new security issue. Mutual authentication, creating a communication channel between terrestrial BS and UxNB, and fast handover operations may cause security issues in the use of UxNB for capacity injection. This new protocol also suggests performing UE handover from terrestrial to UxNB as a group. To the best of the authors' knowledge, there is no authentication solution between BSs according to LTE and 5G standards. The proposed scheme provides a solution for the authentication of UxNB by the terrestrial BS. Additionally, a credential sharing phase for each UE in handover is not required in the proposed method. The absence of a credential sharing step saves resources by reducing the number of communications between BSs. Moreover, many UE handover operations are completed in concise time within the proposed group handover method

A Survey on Cellular-connected UAVs: Design Challenges, Enabling 5G/B5G Innovations, and Experimental Advancements

As an emerging field of aerial robotics, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have gained significant research interest within the wireless networking research community. As soon as national legislations allow UAVs to fly autonomously, we will see swarms of UAV populating the sky of our smart cities to accomplish different missions: parcel delivery, infrastructure monitoring, event filming, surveillance, tracking, etc. The UAV ecosystem can benefit from existing 5G/B5G cellular networks, which can be exploited in different ways to enhance UAV communications. Because of the inherent characteristics of UAV pertaining to flexible mobility in 3D space, autonomous operation and intelligent placement, these smart devices cater to wide range of wireless applications and use cases. This work aims at presenting an in-depth exploration of integration synergies between 5G/B5G cellular systems and UAV technology, where the UAV is integrated as a new aerial User Equipment (UE) to existing cellular networks. In this integration, the UAVs perform the role of flying users within cellular coverage, thus they are termed as cellular-connected UAVs (a.k.a. UAV-UE, drone-UE, 5G-connected drone, or aerial user). The main focus of this work is to present an extensive study of integration challenges along with key 5G/B5G technological innovations and ongoing efforts in design prototyping and field trials corroborating cellular-connected UAVs. This study highlights recent progress updates with respect to 3GPP standardization and emphasizes socio-economic concerns that must be accounted before successful adoption of this promising technology. Various open problems paving the path to future research opportunities are also discussed.Comment: 30 pages, 18 figures, 9 tables, 102 references, journal submissio

Flying Drones Beyond Visual Line of Sight Using 4G LTE: Issues and Concerns

The purpose of this paper is to address the extent in which 4G LTE can be used for air traffic management of small Unmanned Air Vehicles (sUAVs) and the limitations and enhancements that may be necessary. We provide a brief overview of the communications aspects of the Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Traffic Management Project followed by the evolving trends in air traffic management including beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations concepts and current BVLOS operational systems. Issues and Concerns are addressed including the rapidly evolving global regulations and the resulting communications requirements as well LTE downlink and uplink interference at altitude and how that interference affects command and control reliability as well as application data capabilities and mobility performance

Authority Handover Procedure and Safety Decision Strategy in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Over recent years, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) applications have become popular in different areas, such as aerial image acquisition, agriculture, inspection and maintenance, mapping, and delivery services. Some of these services require the ability to fly UAVs Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) to cover greater distances. Data provided by onboard instruments control the BVLOS operation. The flight controller is responsible for directing the drone flight by controlling the motor’s speed and gathering sensor data. The relevant information about the aircraft, such as position, altitude, speed, and direction of flight, are transmitted via a radio link that informs an operator or a Ground Control Station (GCS). In some drone architectures, there is also an extra computer known as a companion computer or mission computer. They are responsible for providing more intelligence to the flight controller by changing flight parameters. The tasks running on a companion computer can add the capacity to make intelligent decisions during autonomous flight or emergencies, for instance, when the drone loses the radio link with GCS. In addition, for complex drone operations in larger coverage areas, it is necessary to transfer wireless communication links from one access point to another without experiencing connectivity loss. This procedure is known as Handover, and there is much research in this area. Therefore, studies in this field are still needed to find better solutions to avoid failures and increase public and regulatory acceptance of BVLOS operations with UAVs. In this context, the thesis intends to address solutions to the security authorization handover procedure and addresses security strategies in case of a loss of connection.Durante os últimos anos, a utilização de Veículos Aéreos Não Tripulados (VANTs) vem se tornando popular em diferentes áreas como agricultura, inspeção e manutenção de estruturas, mapeamento e serviços de entregas. Alguns desses serviços exigem a capacidade de voar VANTs além do campo de visão (BVLOS) para cobrir distâncias maiores. Os dados fornecidos pelos instrumentos de bordo controlam a operação BVLOS. O controlador de voo é responsável por direcionar a aeronave controlando a velocidade dos motores e coletando dados dos sensores. Alguns dados do veículo, como posição, altitude, velocidade e direção do voo, são transmitidos por meio de um link de rádio que informam operadores ou uma estação de controle em solo. Em algumas arquiteturas de VANTs, há também um dispositivo extra conhecido como computador complementar ou computador de missão. Eles são responsáveis por fornecer inteligência ao controlador de voo devido a maior capacidade de processamento. As tarefas executadas em um computador de missão podem agregar a capacidade de tomar decisões inteligentes durante o voo autônomo ou em situações de emergências, por exemplo, quando o veículo perde a conexão com a estação de controle em solo. Para operações de VANTs em áreas de maior cobertura, é necessário transferir a conexão de comunicação sem fio de um ponto de acesso para outro sem que o veículo experiencie perda significativa de conectividade. Esse procedimento é conhecido como handover, e há muita pesquisa nessa área. Entretanto, ainda existem preocupações em torno das atuais tecnologias em termos de confiabilidade de comunicação, cibersegurança e controle autónomo. Portanto, estudos nesta área ainda são necessários para encontrar melhores soluções para evitar falhas e aumentar a aceitação pública e regulatória das operações BVLOS com VANTs. Neste contexto, a tese aborda soluções para o procedimento de transferência de autorização do controle do veículo e aborda estratégias de segurança em caso de perda de conexão com a estação de controle

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as on-demand QoS enabler for Multimedia Applications in Smart Cities

The evolution of drones and similar small wingspan UAVs has resulted in their use in many commercial applications. This has allowed investigating the potential use of drones in the context of Internet of Things. In the recent past, there is ample evidence indicating the use of UAVs as a means to supplement mobile infrastructure to extend it for surveillance, monitoring, data collection and providing on-demand network access capabilities. This paper explores the potential of UAVs to act as on-demand QoS enablers for TCP-based applications within Smart Cities, particularly those applications that require low connection delays, reliability and high throughputs such as multimedia streaming.Many multimedia rich applications, such as live streaming, multi-player online gaming are mostly tied down to fixed-line broadband infrastructure. Mobile cloud technologies and Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) address the challenge by bringing the computing, storage and networking resources to the edge and integrating with the base station, thereby providing better content delivery. The paper presents a concept of UAV-based aerial MEC, which hosts a TCP-proxy that acts as an `On-Demand QoS' enabler to TCP-based applications in Smart Cities reducing the overall-connection delays and increasing the throughput thereby enhancing the end-user experience. With the technologies available in literature we demonstrate that a UAV-based aerial MEC with the capability to migrate QoS-enabling processes from the edge to the core and edge to the edge, to support mobile applications, is feasible