Survey on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Networks for Civil Applications: A Communications Viewpoint

Samira Hayat, Evşen Yanmaz, Raheeb Muzaffar

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

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.
Original languageEnglish
Article number7463007
Pages (from-to)2624-2661
Number of pages38
JournalIEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials
Volume18
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2016
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Protocols
  • Vehicles
  • Reliability
  • Quality of service
  • Wireless sensor networks
  • Adaptation models
  • Wireless communication
  • UAV

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