Network-Connected UAV Communications: Potentials and Challenges

This article explores the use of network-connected unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communications as a compelling solution to achieve high-rate information transmission and support ultra-reliable UAV remote command and control. We first discuss the use cases of UAVs and the resulting communication requirements, accompanied with a flexible architecture for network-connected UAV communications. Then, the signal transmission and interference characteristics are theoretically analyzed, and subsequently we highlight the design and optimization considerations, including antenna design, non-orthogonal multiple access communications, as well as network selection and association optimization. Finally, case studies are provided to show the feasibility of network-connected UAV communications

Energy and Information Management of Electric Vehicular Network: A Survey

The connected vehicle paradigm empowers vehicles with the capability to communicate with neighboring vehicles and infrastructure, shifting the role of vehicles from a transportation tool to an intelligent service platform. Meanwhile, the transportation electrification pushes forward the electric vehicle (EV) commercialization to reduce the greenhouse gas emission by petroleum combustion. The unstoppable trends of connected vehicle and EVs transform the traditional vehicular system to an electric vehicular network (EVN), a clean, mobile, and safe system. However, due to the mobility and heterogeneity of the EVN, improper management of the network could result in charging overload and data congestion. Thus, energy and information management of the EVN should be carefully studied. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on the deployment and management of EVN considering all three aspects of energy flow, data communication, and computation. We first introduce the management framework of EVN. Then, research works on the EV aggregator (AG) deployment are reviewed to provide energy and information infrastructure for the EVN. Based on the deployed AGs, we present the research work review on EV scheduling that includes both charging and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) scheduling. Moreover, related works on information communication and computing are surveyed under each scenario. Finally, we discuss open research issues in the EVN

Mobile Cloud Computing with a UAV-Mounted Cloudlet: Optimal Bit Allocation for Communication and Computation

Mobile cloud computing relieves the tension between compute-intensive mobile applications and battery-constrained mobile devices by enabling the offloading of computing tasks from mobiles to a remote processors. This paper considers a mobile cloud computing scenario in which the "cloudlet" processor that provides offloading opportunities to mobile devices is mounted on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to enhance coverage. Focusing on a slotted communication system with frequency division multiplexing between mobile and UAV, the joint optimization of the number of input bits transmitted in the uplink by the mobile to the UAV, the number of input bits processed by the cloudlet at the UAV, and the number of output bits returned by the cloudlet to the mobile in the downlink in each slot is carried out by means of dual decomposition under maximum latency constraints with the aim of minimizing the mobile energy consumption. Numerical results reveal the critical importance of an optimized bit allocation in order to enable significant energy savings as compared to local mobile execution for stringent latency constraints.Comment: 21 pages, 3 figures, 1 Table, accepted in IET Communication

Planning UAV Activities for Efficient User Coverage in Disaster Areas

Climate changes brought about by global warming as well as man-made environmental changes are often the cause of sever natural disasters. ICT, which is itself responsible for global warming due to its high carbon footprint, can play a role in alleviating the consequences of such hazards by providing reliable, resilient means of communication during a disaster crisis. In this paper, we explore the provision of wireless coverage through UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) to complement, or replace, the traditional communication infrastructure. The use of UAVs is indeed crucial in emergency scenarios, as they allow for the quick and easy deployment of micro and pico cellular base stations where needed. We characterize the movements of UAVs and define an optimization problem to determine the best UAV coverage that maximizes the user throughput, while maintaining fairness across the different parts of the geographical area that has been affected by the disaster. To evaluate our strategy, we simulate a flooding in San Francisco and the car traffic resulting from people seeking safety on higher ground

Air-Ground Integrated Mobile Edge Networks: Architecture, Challenges and Opportunities

The ever-increasing mobile data demands have posed significant challenges in the current radio access networks, while the emerging computation-heavy Internet of things (IoT) applications with varied requirements demand more flexibility and resilience from the cloud/edge computing architecture. In this article, to address the issues, we propose a novel air-ground integrated mobile edge network (AGMEN), where UAVs are flexibly deployed and scheduled, and assist the communication, caching, and computing of the edge network. In specific, we present the detailed architecture of AGMEN, and investigate the benefits and application scenarios of drone-cells, and UAV-assisted edge caching and computing. Furthermore, the challenging issues in AGMEN are discussed, and potential research directions are highlighted.Comment: Accepted by IEEE Communications Magazine. 5 figure

Aeronautical Ad Hoc Networking for the Internet-Above-The-Clouds

The engineering vision of relying on the ``smart sky" for supporting air traffic and the ``Internet above the clouds" for in-flight entertainment has become imperative for the future aircraft industry. Aeronautical ad hoc Networking (AANET) constitutes a compelling concept for providing broadband communications above clouds by extending the coverage of Air-to-Ground (A2G) networks to oceanic and remote airspace via autonomous and self-configured wireless networking amongst commercial passenger airplanes. The AANET concept may be viewed as a new member of the family of Mobile ad hoc Networks (MANETs) in action above the clouds. However, AANETs have more dynamic topologies, larger and more variable geographical network size, stricter security requirements and more hostile transmission conditions. These specific characteristics lead to more grave challenges in aircraft mobility modeling, aeronautical channel modeling and interference mitigation as well as in network scheduling and routing. This paper provides an overview of AANET solutions by characterizing the associated scenarios, requirements and challenges. Explicitly, the research addressing the key techniques of AANETs, such as their mobility models, network scheduling and routing, security and interference are reviewed. Furthermore, we also identify the remaining challenges associated with developing AANETs and present their prospective solutions as well as open issues. The design framework of AANETs and the key technical issues are investigated along with some recent research results. Furthermore, a range of performance metrics optimized in designing AANETs and a number of representative multi-objective optimization algorithms are outlined

6G White Paper on Machine Learning in Wireless Communication Networks

The focus of this white paper is on machine learning (ML) in wireless communications. 6G wireless communication networks will be the backbone of the digital transformation of societies by providing ubiquitous, reliable, and near-instant wireless connectivity for humans and machines. Recent advances in ML research has led enable a wide range of novel technologies such as self-driving vehicles and voice assistants. Such innovation is possible as a result of the availability of advanced ML models, large datasets, and high computational power. On the other hand, the ever-increasing demand for connectivity will require a lot of innovation in 6G wireless networks, and ML tools will play a major role in solving problems in the wireless domain. In this paper, we provide an overview of the vision of how ML will impact the wireless communication systems. We first give an overview of the ML methods that have the highest potential to be used in wireless networks. Then, we discuss the problems that can be solved by using ML in various layers of the network such as the physical layer, medium access layer, and application layer. Zero-touch optimization of wireless networks using ML is another interesting aspect that is discussed in this paper. Finally, at the end of each section, important research questions that the section aims to answer are presented

Optimal Power Allocation for Secure Directional Modulation Networks with a Full-duplex UAV User

This paper make an investigation of a secure unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-aided communication network based on directional modulation(DM), in which one ground base station (Alice), one legitimate full-duplex (FD) user (Bob) and one illegal receiver (Eve) are involved. In this network, Alice acts as a control center to transmit confidential message and artificial noise (AN). The UAV user, moving along a linear flight trajectory, is intended to receive the useful information from Alice. At the same time, it also sends AN signals to further interference Eve's channel. Aiming at maximizing secrecy rate during the UAV flight process, a joint optimization problem is formulated corresponding to power allocation (PA) factors, beamforming vector, AN projection matrices. For simplicity, maximum ratio transmission, null-space projection and the leakage-based method are applied to form the transmit beamforming vector, AN projection matrix at Alice, and AN projection vector at Bob, respectively. Following this, the optimization problem reduces into a bivariate optimization programme with two PA factors. We put forward an alternating iterative algorithm to optimize the two PA factors. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed strategy for FD mode achieves a higher SR than the half-duplex (HD) mode, and outperforms the FD mode with fixed PA strategy

Machine Learning for Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Networking

Fueled by the advancement of 5G new radio (5G NR), rapid development has occurred in many fields. Compared with the conventional approaches, beamforming and network slicing enable 5G NR to have ten times decrease in latency, connection density, and experienced throughput than 4G long term evolution (4G LTE). These advantages pave the way for the evolution of Cyber-physical Systems (CPS) on a large scale. The reduction of consumption, the advancement of control engineering, and the simplification of Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) enable the UAS networking deployment on a large scale to become feasible. The UAS networking can finish multiple complex missions simultaneously. However, the limitations of the conventional approaches are still a big challenge to make a trade-off between the massive management and efficient networking on a large scale. With 5G NR and machine learning, in this dissertation, my contributions can be summarized as the following: I proposed a novel Optimized Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector (OAODV) routing protocol to improve the throughput of Intra UAS networking. The novel routing protocol can reduce the system overhead and be efficient. To improve the security, I proposed a blockchain scheme to mitigate the malicious basestations for cellular connected UAS networking and a proof-of-traffic (PoT) to improve the efficiency of blockchain for UAS networking on a large scale. Inspired by the biological cell paradigm, I proposed the cell wall routing protocols for heterogeneous UAS networking. With 5G NR, the inter connections between UAS networking can strengthen the throughput and elasticity of UAS networking. With machine learning, the routing schedulings for intra- and inter- UAS networking can enhance the throughput of UAS networking on a large scale. The inter UAS networking can achieve the max-min throughput globally edge coloring. I leveraged the upper and lower bound to accelerate the optimization of edge coloring. This dissertation paves a way regarding UAS networking in the integration of CPS and machine learning. The UAS networking can achieve outstanding performance in a decentralized architecture. Concurrently, this dissertation gives insights into UAS networking on a large scale. These are fundamental to integrating UAS and National Aerial System (NAS), critical to aviation in the operated and unmanned fields. The dissertation provides novel approaches for the promotion of UAS networking on a large scale. The proposed approaches extend the state-of-the-art of UAS networking in a decentralized architecture. All the alterations can contribute to the establishment of UAS networking with CPS

Wireless Communication using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs): Optimal Transport Theory for Hover Time Optimization

In this paper, the effective use of flight-time constrained unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as flying base stations that can provide wireless service to ground users is investigated. In particular, a novel framework for optimizing the performance of such UAV-based wireless systems in terms of the average number of bits (data service) transmitted to users as well as UAVs' hover duration (i.e. flight time) is proposed. In the considered model, UAVs hover over a given geographical area to serve ground users that are distributed within the area based on an arbitrary spatial distribution function. In this case, two practical scenarios are considered. In the first scenario, based on the maximum possible hover times of UAVs, the average data service delivered to the users under a fair resource allocation scheme is maximized by finding the optimal cell partitions associated to the UAVs. Using the mathematical framework of optimal transport theory, a gradient-based algorithm is proposed for optimally partitioning the geographical area based on the users' distribution, hover times, and locations of the UAVs. In the second scenario, given the load requirements of ground users, the minimum average hover time that the UAVs need for completely servicing their ground users is derived. To this end, first, an optimal bandwidth allocation scheme for serving the users is proposed. Then, given this optimal bandwidth allocation, the optimal cell partitions associated with the UAVs are derived by exploiting the optimal transport theory. Results show that our proposed cell partitioning approach leads to a significantly higher fairness among the users compared to the classical weighted Voronoi diagram. In addition, our results reveal an inherent tradeoff between the hover time of UAVs and bandwidth efficiency while serving the ground users