Survey on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Networks for Civil Applications: A Communications Viewpoint
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- 29 April 2016
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials
- Vol. 18 (4), 2624-2661
- https://doi.org/10.1109/comst.2016.2560343
Abstract
The days where swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will occupy our skies are fast approaching due to the introduction of cost-efficient and reliable small aerial vehicles and the increasing demand for use of such vehicles in a plethora of civil applications. Governments and industry alike have been heavily investing in the development of UAVs. As such it is important to understand the characteristics of networks with UAVs to enable the incorporation of multiple, coordinated aerial vehicles into the air traffic in a reliable and safe manner. To this end, this survey reports the characteristics and requirements of UAV networks for envisioned civil applications over the period 2000-2015 from a communications and networking viewpoint. We survey and quantify quality-of-service requirements, network-relevant mission parameters, data requirements, and the minimum data to be transmitted over the network. Furthermore, we elaborate on general networking related requirements such as connectivity, adaptability, safety, privacy, security, and scalability. We also report experimental results from many projects and investigate the suitability of existing communication technologies for supporting reliable aerial networking.Keywords
Funding Information
- Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency of the European Commission (EMJD ICE FPA 2010-0012)
- ERDF, KWF, and BABEG (20214/24272/36084 (SINUS))
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