The next generation of mobile systems, 5G, will be the communication standard that accommodates the proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT). Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are envisioned to support many applications in providing 5G connectivity to the IoT, by extending high speed connectivity from the sky to objects on the ground, or even by carrying on board some IoT devices. However, given their critical nature, the management of UAVs induces high exchange of control messages with the Ground Control Station (GCS), resulting in a crowded spectrum used by the cellular networks. The authors raise the problem of degrading the network spectrum with UAVs' management messages, and discuss the need for an efficient orchestration system. In this paper, they propose a novel scheme, dubbed Aerial Control System (ACS), which is based on separating the data plane from the control plane of UAVs, and pushing the latter to be performed in the air by UAVs. The solution provides an orchestration logic that takes advantage of the autonomous nature of UAVs to organize UAVs in one or several clusters. UAV-to-UAV communication (U2U) enables spectrum reuse and avoids crowding the network with management messages, while dedicating more 5G spectrum for ensuring more bandwidth to the IoT through UAV-to-Infrastructure communication (U2I). I. INTRODUCTIONAmongst most technologies affecting human beings in the 21 st century, the Internet of Things (IoT) would be the most important one. Smart grids, smart cities, and environment monitoring are some noticeable IoT applications, just to name a few. The IoT evolution is expected to be even greater in the near future, with more than 20 billion connected devices by 2020. In this context, as the current communication networks are about reaching their limits, the upcoming generation of mobile systems, 5G, will be the de-facto communication standard to support a large number of diverse connectable devices. It goes beyond the capabilities of the current Long Term Evolution (LTE), providing higher data rates, zero delay, and high throughput. Spectrum efficiency is an important feature and requirement of 5G. The usage of millimeter waves, whose frequency spectrum is from 30 to 300 GHz, has been proposed for data transmission. This would enable the extra-capacity foreseen by 5G and accommodate the proliferation of the IoT.The usage of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs, alternatively known as drones) for providing high-speed wireless communications is expected to play a very important role in 5G [1]. When equipped with the dedicated radio access technologies, UAVs can be used to extend network

Given the continuously increasing use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in different domains, their management in the uncontrolled airspace has become a necessity. This has given rise to new systems called UAVs Traffic Management (UTM) systems. Nevertheless, currently, there is a lack of communication infrastructures that can support the requirements of UTM systems. Luckily, the envisioned 5G mobile network has introduced the concept of Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) in its architecture to support mission-critical applications by decreasing the end-to-end latency and the unreliability of communication. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of the network latency and reliability on the control of UAVs' flights. The obtained results show that a UAV can deviate from its intended path with more than 5m if the network latency exceeds 400ms and with more than 2m if the packet loss probability exceeds 0.2. To overcome these limitations, we have leveraged MEC to provide a new UTM framework that enables an efficient traffic management. Moreover, due to MEC resource-limited nature and in order to give an insight about the resource provisioning, we have evaluated the scalability of the proposed solution in terms of the number of UAVs that can be handled without affecting the efficiency of the proposed UTM framework.

This paper provides an overview of enhanced network services, while emphasizing on the role of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as core network equipment with radio and backhaul capabilities. Initially, we elaborate the various deployment options, focusing on UAVs as airborne radio, backhaul and core network equipment, pointing out the benefits and limitations. We then analyze the required enhancements in the Service-Based Architecture (SBA) to support UAV services including UAV navigation and air traffic management, weather forecasting and UAV connectivity management. The use of airborne UAVs network services is assessed via qualitative means, considering the impact on vehicular applications. Finally, an evaluation has been conducted via a testbed implementation, to explore the performance of UAVs as edge cloud nodes, hosting an Aerial Control System (ACS) function responsible for the control and orchestration of a UAV fleet.

The increased use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in numerous domains, will result in high traffic densities in the low-altitude airspace. Consequently, UAVs Traffic Management (UTM) systems that allow the integration of UAVs in the low-altitude airspace are gaining a lot of momentum. Furthermore, the 5 th generation of mobile networks (5G) will most likely provide the underlying support for UTM systems by providing connectivity to UAVs, enabling the control, tracking and communication with remote applications and services. However, UAVs may need to communicate with services with different communication Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, ranging form best-effort services to Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications (URLLC) services. Indeed, 5G can ensure efficient Quality of Service (QoS) enhancements using new technologies, such as network slicing and Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC). In this context, Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is considered as one of the pillars of 5G systems, by providing a QoS-aware Management and Orchestration (MANO) of softwarized services across cloud and MEC platforms. The MANO process of UAV's services can be enhanced further using the information provided by the UTM system, such as the UAVs' flight plans. In this paper, we propose an extended framework for the management and orchestration of UAVs' services in MEC-NFV environment by combining the functionalities provided by the MEC-NFV management and orchestration framework with the functionalities of a UTM system. Moreover, we propose an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) model of the placement scheme of our framework and we evaluate its performances. The obtained results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed solutions in achieving its design goals.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can offer a plethora of applications, provided that the appropriate ground control and complementary computing and storage services are available in close proximity. To accomplish this, edge cloud platforms, deployed at or close to the base stations, are essential. However, current UAV travel planning does not take into account the resource constraints of such edge cloud platforms. This paper introduces an aligned process for UAV flight planning and networking resource allocation, minimizing the total traveled distance. It proposes two solutions, namely (i) a Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC)-Aware UAVs' Path planning (MAUP) based on integer linear programming and (ii) an Accelerated MAUP (AMAUP), i.e., a heuristic and scalable approach that adopts the shortest weighted path algorithm considering directed graphs. The performance of the two solutions are evaluated using computer-based simulations and the obtained results demonstrate the effectiveness of the two solutions in achieving their design goals.