IoT and UAV Integration in 5G Hybrid Terrestrial-Satellite Networks

The Fifth Generation of Mobile Communications (5G) will lead to the growth of use cases demanding higher capacity and a enhanced data rate, a lower latency, and a more flexible and scalable network able to offer better user Quality of Experience (QoE). The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of these use cases. It has been spreading in the recent past few years, and it covers a wider range of possible application scenarios, such as smart city, smart factory, and smart agriculture, among many others. However, the limitations of the terrestrial network hinder the deployment of IoT devices and services. Besides, the existence of a plethora of different solutions (short vs. long range, commercialized vs. standardized, etc.), each of them based on different communication protocols and, in some cases, on different access infrastructures, makes the integration among them and with the upcoming 5G infrastructure more difficult. This paper discusses the huge set of IoT solutions available or still under standardization that will need to be integrated in the 5G framework. UAVs and satellites will be proposed as possible solutions to ease this integration, overcoming the limitations of the terrestrial infrastructure, such as the limited covered areas and the densification of the number of IoT devices per square kilometer

A Study on Cross-Carrier Scheduler for Carrier Aggregation in Beyond 5G Networks

Carrier Aggregation (CA) allows the network and User Equipment (UE) to aggregate carrier frequencies in licensed, unlicensed, or Shared Access (SA) bands of the same or different spectrum bands to boost the achieved data rates. This work aims to provide a detailed study on CA techniques for 5G New Radio (5G NR) networks while elaborating on CA deployment scenarios, CA-enabled 5G networks, and radio resource management and scheduling techniques. We analyze cross-carrier scheduling schemes in CA-enabled 5G networks for Downlink (DL) resource allocation. The requirements, challenges, and opportunities in allocating Resource Blocks (RBs) and Component Carriers (CCs) are addressed. The study and analysis of various multi-band scheduling techniques are made while maintaining that high throughput and reduced power usage must be achieved at the UE. Finally, we present CA as the critical enabler to advanced systems while discussing how it meets the demands and holds the potential to support beyond 5G networks, followed by discussing open issues in resource allocation and scheduling techniques.This work was supported by FCT/MCTES through national funds and, when applicable, cofounded EU funds under the project UIDB/50008/2020, ORCIP (22141-01/SAICT/2016), COST CA 20120 INTERACT, SNF Scientific Exchange - AISpectrum (project 205842) and TeamUp5G. TeamUp5G has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie ETN TeamUp5G, grant agreement No. 813391.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Unmanned aerial vehicles optimal airtime estimation for energy aware deployment in IoT-enabled fifth generation cellular networks

[EN] Cellular networks based on new generation standards are the major enabler for Internet of things (IoT) communication. Narrowband-IoT and Long Term Evolution for Machines are the newest wide area network-based cellular technologies for IoT applications. The deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has gained the popularity in cellular networks by using temporary ubiquitous coverage in the areas where the infrastructure-based networks are either not available or have vanished due to some disasters. The major challenge in such networks is the efficient UAVs deployment that covers maximum users and area with the minimum number of UAVs. The performance and sustainability of UAVs is largely dependent upon the available residual energy especially in mission planning. Although energy harvesting techniques and efficient storage units are available, but these have their own constraints and the limited onboard energy still severely hinders the practical realization of UAVs. This paper employs neglected parameters of UAVs energy consumption in order to get actual status of available energy and proposed a solution that more accurately estimates the UAVs operational airtime. The proposed model is evaluated in test bed and simulation environment where the results show the consideration of such explicit usage parameters achieves significant improvement in airtime estimation.The research is funded by the Department of Computer Science, Iqra University, Islamabad Campus, PakistanMajeed, S.; Sohail, A.; Qureshi, KN.; Kumar, A.; Iqbal, S.; Lloret, J. (2020). Unmanned aerial vehicles optimal airtime estimation for energy aware deployment in IoT-enabled fifth generation cellular networks. EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking. 2020(1):1-14. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13638-020-01877-01142020

Spectral Correlation for Signal Presence Detection and Frequency Acquisition of Small Satellites

17 USC 105 interim-entered record; under temporary embargo.Challenges in interference-limited satellite detection arising from the low-earth orbit (LEO) and the Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) frequency bands are addressed. In particular, a novel signal presence detector based on cyclostationary signal properties is proposed and analyzed for a low signal-to-noise-plus-interference ratio (SINR) regime. The performance of the proposed detector, which is applicable to various small-satellite scenarios, is evaluated on both simulated and real-world measurement data. This measurement data has been collected from the scientific satellite mission “Picosats Realizing Orbital Propagation Calibrations using Beacon Emitters” (PROPCUBE).U.S. Government affiliation is unstated in article text

RPAS communication channels based on WCDMA 3GPP standard

First built models of Remotely Piloted Air System (RPAS) communication channels based on Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) 3GPP Standard were designed. Base Station (BS) transmission within the Radio Line of Sight (RLoS) and through the satellite using Beyond Radio Line of Sight (BRLoS) was considered. The dependencies of the Bit Error Rate (BER) on the signal-noise ratio for different RPAS velocities and WCDMA сhannel models were obtained. The dependences of the BER on the signal-noise ratio for different levels of satellite transponder nonlinearity were studied. The dependence of the BER on the BS antenna diameter in case of the transponder nonlinearity was analysed. The dependencies for satellite channel characteristics, first obtained taking into account the motion of the RPAS, make it possible to predict the behavior of the communication system in critical conditions

Exploring the Technical Advances and Limits of Autonomous UAVs for Precise Agriculture in Constrained Environments

In the field of precise agriculture with autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the utilization of drones holds significant potential to transform crop monitoring, management, and harvesting techniques. However, despite the numerous benefits of UAVs in smart farming, there are still several technical challenges that need to be addressed in order to render their widespread adoption possible, especially in constrained environments. This paper provides a study of the technical aspect and limitations of autonomous UAVs in precise agriculture applications for constrained environments

UAV Based 5G Network: A Practical Survey Study

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are anticipated to significantly contribute to the development of new wireless networks that could handle high-speed transmissions and enable wireless broadcasts. When compared to communications that rely on permanent infrastructure, UAVs offer a number of advantages, including flexible deployment, dependable line-of-sight (LoS) connection links, and more design degrees of freedom because of controlled mobility. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) combined with 5G networks and Internet of Things (IoT) components have the potential to completely transform a variety of industries. UAVs may transfer massive volumes of data in real-time by utilizing the low latency and high-speed abilities of 5G networks, opening up a variety of applications like remote sensing, precision farming, and disaster response. This study of UAV communication with regard to 5G/B5G WLANs is presented in this research. The three UAV-assisted MEC network scenarios also include the specifics for the allocation of resources and optimization. We also concentrate on the case where a UAV does task computation in addition to serving as a MEC server to examine wind farm turbines. This paper covers the key implementation difficulties of UAV-assisted MEC, such as optimum UAV deployment, wind models, and coupled trajectory-computation performance optimization, in order to promote widespread implementations of UAV-assisted MEC in practice. The primary problem for 5G and beyond 5G (B5G) is delivering broadband access to various device kinds. Prior to discussing associated research issues faced by the developing integrated network design, we first provide a brief overview of the background information as well as the networks that integrate space, aviation, and land

System assessment of WUSN using NB-IoT UAV-aided networks in potato crops

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are part of precision agriculture; also, their impact on fast deployable wireless communication is offering new solutions and systems never envisioned before such as collecting information from underground sensors by using low power Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. In this paper, we propose a (Narrow Band IoT) NB-IoT system for collecting underground soil parameters in potato crops using a UAV-aided network. To this end, a simulation tool implementing a gateway mounted on a UAV using NB-IoT based access network and LTE based backhaul network is developed. This tool evaluates the performance of a realistic scenario in a potato field near Bogota, Colombia, accounting for real size packets in a complete IoT application. While computing the wireless link quality, it allocates access and backhaul resources simultaneously based on the technologies used. We compare the performance of wireless underground sensors buried in dry and wet soils at four different depths. Results show that a single drone with 50 seconds of flight time could satisfy more than 2000 sensors deployed in a 20 hectares field, depending on the buried depth and soil characteristics. We found that an optimal flight altitude is located between 60 m and 80 m for buried sensors. Moreover, we establish that the water content reduces the maximum reachable buried depth from 70 cm in dry soils, down to 30 cm in wet ones. Besides, we found that in the proposed scenario, sensors & x2019; battery life could last up to 82 months for above ground sensors and 77 months for the deepest buried ones. Finally, we discuss the influence of the sensor & x2019;s density and buried depth, the flight service time and altitude in power-constrained conditions and we propose optimal configuration to improve system performance

Space-Air-Ground Integrated 6G Wireless Communication Networks: A Review of Antenna Technologies and Application Scenarios

A review of technological solutions and advances in the framework of a Vertical Heterogeneous Network (VHetNet) integrating satellite, airborne and terrestrial networks is presented. The disruptive features and challenges offered by a fruitful cooperation among these segments within a ubiquitous and seamless wireless connectivity are described. The available technologies and the key research directions for achieving global wireless coverage by considering all these layers are thoroughly discussed. Emphasis is placed on the available antenna systems in satellite, airborne and ground layers by highlighting strengths and weakness and by providing some interesting trends in research. A summary of the most suitable applicative scenarios for future 6G wireless communications are finally illustrated

IoT and UAV Integration in 5G Hybrid Terrestrial-Satellite Networks

The Fifth Generation of Mobile Communications (5G) will lead to the growth of use cases demanding higher capacity and a enhanced data rate, a lower latency, and a more flexible and scalable network able to offer better user Quality of Experience (QoE). The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of these use cases. It has been spreading in the recent past few years, and it covers a wider range of possible application scenarios, such as smart city, smart factory, and smart agriculture, among many others. However, the limitations of the terrestrial network hinder the deployment of IoT devices and services. Besides, the existence of a plethora of different solutions (short vs. long range, commercialized vs. standardized, etc.), each of them based on different communication protocols and, in some cases, on different access infrastructures, makes the integration among them and with the upcoming 5G infrastructure more difficult. This paper discusses the huge set of IoT solutions available or still under standardization that will need to be integrated in the 5G framework. UAVs and satellites will be proposed as possible solutions to ease this integration, overcoming the limitations of the terrestrial infrastructure, such as the limited covered areas and the densification of the number of IoT devices per square kilometer