Comparing approaches for coordination of autonomous communications UAVs

Review: Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as Mobile Sensing Platforms (MSPs) for Disaster Response, Civil Security and Public Safety

“…There are many opportunities to employ UAVs in the context of smart cities and public safety: for example, ref [51] lists the following applications as relevant domains: While flying video surveillance systems [48] are maybe the most popular vision of the future in pop-culture, so-called flying cellular networks [52] are receiving by far the most attention in the research community (in the context of publications we refer to [52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62], all of which report on UAV-based aerial communication infrastructure to deliver broadband wireless connectivity or for UAV-based mobile wireless access networks). In contrast to the normal wireless access networks such as cell networks for mobile phones which ultimately rely on a wired infrastructure-based network [55], a UAV-based wireless access networks could be relatively independent from fixed entry points to the back haul network because even if they can not provide a complete airborne connection, they can dynamically change their topology and the back haul entry points they connect to.…”

“…While the obvious advantage of less power demanding operations during passive activities such as sensing will probably be favored until more efficient flight is achieved and lighter and better batteries are available, the applications that make use of active interactions of the drones with the environment are already numerous. The main example for acting drones is the use of UAVs as a mobile aerial communication infrastructure [54,92], specifically in the domains of delivering wireless broadband [52,53,55,56,[58][59][60][61]92,93] and, more low-tech, VHF/UHF radio coverage. The latter is especially relevant during emergencies [92].…”

“…By their very nature, UAV-based sensor networks lend themselves for approaches using multiple devices and the literature reports on a number of swarm-based approaches and implementations, specifically the use of UAV swarms realizing/augmenting GSM cell networks [52,53,55,56,[58][59][60][61]92,93] or wireless sensor network [54,57,92]. These consider both, homogeneous UAV swarms [34,46,55,56,77,87,100,102] as well as swarms consisting of more than one type of device, e.g., UAVs working with Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) [8,60,88] or with Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) [70,71]. As discussed in (e.g., [70]) multiple UAVs can work together to identify objects of interest (shipwreck survivors, intruders) in water (here: the open sea) using multiple device types (aquatic as well as aerial devices, the former serving as a landing platform/staging location for the latter).…”

“…For example, UAVs can be used as mobile nodes in communication networks (to replace or augment destroyed infrastructure or to overcome geographical obstacles limiting line of sight communication like VHF/UHF radios) [92]. In another example a temporary aerial cell network to provide communication access to wide areas in the immediate aftermath of a infrastructure destroying event such as a tsunami or an earthquake (both of which can conceivably happen during ideal weather conditions for UAVs) is discussed [56].…”

“…One of the most common applications scenarios in the literature is the use of UAVs to provide cellular network coverage, i.e., flying GSM base stations [58] (e.g., [52,53,55,56,[58][59][60][61]92,93]), and as Section 3.1.1 discusses, this is also the case in the context of disaster response. The second most common application type is using UAVs to provide or augment remaining sensing capabilities [84] (e.g., [34,40,53,68,69,74,[76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88]).…”