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

Simulations of the Impact of Controlled Mobility for Routing Protocols

This paper addresses mobility control routing in wireless networks. Given a data flow request between a source-destination pair, the problem is to move nodes towards the best placement, such that the performance of the network is improved. Our purpose is to find the best nodes selection depending on the minimization of the maximum distance that nodes have to travel to reach their final position. We propose a routing protocol, the Routing Protocol based on Controlled Mobility (RPCM), where the chosen nodes' path minimizes the total travelled distance to reach desirable position. Specifically, controlled mobility is intended as a new design dimension network allowing to drive nodes to specific best position in order to achieve some common objectives. The main aim of this paper is to show by simulation the effectiveness of controlled mobility when it is used as a new design dimension in wireless networks. Extensive simulations are conducted to evaluate the proposed routing algorithm. Results show how our protocol outperforms a well-known routing protocol, the Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector routing (AODV), in terms of throughput, average end-to-end data packet delay and energy spent to send a packet unit

Nodes Placement for reducing Energy Consumption in Multimedia Transmissions

International audiencePower consumption is an essential issue in wireless multimedia sensor networks (WMSNs) due to the elevated processing capabilities requested by the video acquisition hardware installed on the generic sensor node. Hence, node placement scheme in WMSNs greatly impacts the overall network lifetime. In this context, the paper first proposes a suitable hardware architecture to implement a feasible WMS node based on off-the-shelf technology, then it evaluates the energy consumption obtained throughout a wise "energy-spaced" placement of the wireless nodes without affecting the video quality of multimedia traffic

Enhancing Dissemination of Evidence-Based Models for STEM PhD Career Development; a Stakeholder Workshop Report

Sustainability of the scientific enterprise requires being able to recruit, retain, and prepare ongoing generations of PhD-trained scientists ready to adapt with the evolving needs of the scientific workforce and society. This necessitates a broadened, trainee-centered view in doctoral and postdoctoral training—including a prominent focus on career planning, science across sectors, and development of professional skills. Although there is energy and movement to enhance graduate and postdoctoral training, actions remain disparate, leading to inefficiencies in implementation and lack of systemic change. In 2019, an emerging national initiative, Professional Development Hub (pd|hub), hosted a workshop to bring organizations and individuals together across stakeholder groups to discuss enhancing the development, dissemination, and widespread implementation of evidence-based practices for STEM graduate and postdoctoral education, with specific emphasis on career and professional development for PhD scientists. The fifty workshop participants represented nine key stakeholder groups: career development practitioners, scientific societies, disseminators, education researchers and evaluators, employers of PhD scientists, funders, professional associations, trainees, and university leaders and faculty. In addition, participants spanned different races, ethnicities, genders, disciplines, sectors, geographic locations, career stages, and levels of institutional resources. This report presents cross-cutting themes identified at the workshop, examples of stakeholder-specific perspectives, and recommended next steps. As part of the collective effort to develop a foundation for sustainable solutions, several actions were defined, including: incentivizing change at institutions and programs, curating and disseminating resources for evidence-based career and professional development educational practices, expanding evidence for effective training and mentoring, establishing expectations for STEM career and professional development, and improving communication across all stakeholders in STEM PhD education. Furthermore, the report describes national-level actions already moving forward via pd|hub in the months following the workshop. Building on a decade of reports and gatherings advocating for a shift in graduate and postdoctoral education, this workshop represented a key step and catalyst for change toward a more impactful future.https://escholarship.umassmed.edu/pdhub/1000/thumbnail.jp

Active and Passive Brain-Computer Interfaces Integrated with Extended Reality for Applications in Health 4.0

This paper presents the integration of extended reality (XR) with brain-computer interfaces (BCI) to open up new possibilities in the health 4.0 framework. Such integrated systems are here investigated with respect to an active and a passive BCI paradigm. Regarding the active BCI, the XR part consists of providing visual and vibrotactile feedbacks to help the user during motor imagery tasks. Therefore, XR aims to enhance the neurofeedback by enhancing the user engagement. Meanwhile, in the passive BCI, user engagement monitoring allows the adaptivity of a XR-based rehabilitation game for children. Preliminary results suggest that the XR neurofeedback helps the BCI users to carry on motor imagery tasks with up to 84% classification accuracy, and that the level of emotional and cognitive engagement can be detected with an accuracy greater than 75%

Reliability for Emergency Applications in Internet of Things

International audienceThis paper addresses the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm, which is gaining substantial ground in modern wireless telecommunications. The IoT describes a vision where heterogeneous objects like computers, sensors, Radio-Frequency IDentification (RFID)tags or mobile phones are able to communicate and cooperate efficiently to achieve common goals thanks to a common IP addressing scheme. This paper focuses on the reliability of emergency applications under IoT technology. These applications' success is contingent upon the delivery of high-priority events from many scattered objects to one or more objects without packet loss. Thus, the network has to be selfadaptiveand resilient to errors by providing efficient mechanisms for information distribution especially in the multi-hop scenario. As future perspective, we propose a lightweight and energy efficientjoint mechanism, called AJIA (Adaptive Joint protocol based on Implicit ACK), for packet loss recovery and route quality evaluation in theIoT. In this protocol, we use the overhearing feature, characterizing the wireless channels, as an implicit ACK mechanism. In addition, the protocol allows for an adaptive selection of the routing path based on the link quality

Autonomic Faulty Node Replacement in UAV-Assisted Wireless Sensor Networks: a Test-bed

Several use-cases of the Internet of Things (IoT) rely on the development of large-scale Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) in harsh environments characterized by limited Internet connectivity and battery-powered operations. In such scenarios, the failure of a single node due to energy depletion or hardware issues may cause network partitions and disrupt partially or completely the system operations until the intervention of a human operator. In this paper, we investigate the usage of Unmanned Aerial Networks (UAVs) to enable sensory data collection and support resilient communications in presence of faulty sensor nodes. More specifically, we study the possibility of replacing the ground devices with UAVs which are able to temporarily restore the multi-hop communication towards the WSN sink. To this aim, we extended the Uhura framework, a platform for robotic networking, with novel features for automatic network partition detection and UAV-sink coordination. Then, we created a small test-bed composed of a Bluetooth Mesh WSN and one drone, and characterized the performance of the UAV-assisted WSN system in terms of packet delivery ratio of the end-to-end data flows

Low-Density EEG Correction With Multivariate Decomposition and Subspace Reconstruction

A hybrid method is proposed for removing artifacts from electroencephalographic (EEG) signals. This relies on the integration of artifact subspace reconstruction (ASR) with multivariate empirical mode decomposition (EMD). The method can be applied when few EEG sensors are available, a condition in which existing techniques are not effective, and it was tested with two public datasets: 1) semisynthetic data and 2) experimental data with artifacts. One to four EEG sensors were taken into account, and the proposal was compared to both ASR and multivariate EMD (MEMD) alone. The proposed method efficiently removed muscular, ocular, or eye-blink artifacts on both semisynthetic and experimental data. Unexpectedly, the ASR alone also showed compatible performance on semisynthetic data. However, ASR did not work properly when experimental data were considered. Finally, MEMD was found less effective than both ASR and MEMD-ASR

Identification and characterization of Drosophila Snurportin reveals a role for the import receptor Moleskin/Importin-7 in snRNP biogenesis

Biogenesis of small nuclear ribonucloceoproteins (snRNPs) is biphasic. Small nuclear RNAs (snRNAs) are exported to the cytoplasm for assembly into pre-snRNPs where they are hypermethylated, forming a trimethylguanosine (TMG) cap, and then transported back into the nucleus via the import adaptor, snurportin1 (SPN) and the import receptor importin-β. I have identified CG42303 as dSNUP, the Drosophila orthologue of human SPN (hSPN). Strikingly, the importin-β binding (IBB) domain, which is essential for SPN-mediated snRNP import in humans, is not conserved in dSNUP. Consistent with the lack of an IBB, dSNUP did not interact with the Drosophila importin-β orthologue, Ketel. Despite this fact, dSNUP localized to the nucleus, indicating that there is an alternative dSNUP import pathway or that dSNUP is imported indirectly through importin-β bound snRNPs. I excluded the latter possibility since, in contrast to human cells, snRNPs did not associate with importin-β in Drosophila cells. Previous results suggested that hSPN interacts indirectly with a known import receptor, importin-7. I tested the possibility that the Drosophila orthologue of importin-7, known as Moleskin (Msk), interacts with dSNUP and snRNPs. I discovered that Msk physically associates with both dSNUP and U snRNPs, while snRNP components failed to bind importin-β. Furthermore, Msk null mutant larvae had a significant in vivo reduction of the snRNP component survival motor neuron (SMN), and the snRNP specific nuclear Cajal body marker coilin. Additionally, Msk null mutants exhibited cytoplasmic accumulation of TMG cap signal in the Malpighian tubules, indicating that the import of TMG capped snRNAs is inhibited in the absence of Msk. The reduction of SMN protein was dramatic enough to be detected by western blotting, suggesting a vital role for Msk in the stability of SMN. Interestingly, Msk also localized to snRNP specific nuclear Cajal bodies. In sum, these data indicate that importin-β does not play a role in snRNP import in Drosophila and implicate a crucial function for Msk in fruit fly snRNP biogenesis. Future experiments will be needed to determine the precise function of importin-7/Moleskin in both fruit fly and human snRNP biogenesis.Doctor of Philosoph