Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have found numerous applications and are expected to bring fertile business opportunities in the next decade. Among various enabling technologies for UAVs, wireless communication is essential and has drawn significantly growing attention in recent years. Compared to the conventional terrestrial communications, UAVs’ communications face new challenges due to their high altitude above the ground and great flexibility of movement in the 3-D space. Several critical issues arise, including the line-of-sight (LoS) dominant UAV-ground channels and induced strong aerial-terrestrial network interference, the distinct communication quality-of-service (QoS) requirements for UAV control messages versus payload data, the stringent constraints imposed by the size, weight, and power (SWAP) limitations of UAVs, as well as the exploitation of the new design degree of freedom (DoF) brought by the highly controllable 3-D UAV mobility. In this article, we give a tutorial overview of the recent advances in UAV communications to address the above issues, with an emphasis on how to integrate UAVs into the forthcoming fifth-generation (5G) and future cellular networks. In particular, we partition our discussion into two promising research and application frameworks of UAV communications, namely UAV-assisted wireless communications and cellular-connected UAVs, where UAVs are integrated into the network as new aerial communication platforms and users, respectively. Furthermore, we point out promising directions for future research.

Accessing From the Sky: A Tutorial on UAV Communications for 5G and Beyond

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have attracted great interest in rapid deployment for both civil and military applications. UAV communication has its own distinctive channel characteristics compared to the widely used cellular or satellite systems. Accurate channel characterization is crucial for the performance optimization and design of efficient UAV communication. However, several challenges exist in UAV channel modeling. For example, the propagation characteristics of UAV channels are under explored for spatial and temporal variations in non–stationary channels. Additionally, airframe shadowing has not yet been investigated for small size rotary UAVs. This paper provides an extensive survey of the measurement methods proposed for UAV channel modeling that use low altitude platforms and discusses various channel characterization efforts. We also review from a contemporary perspective of UAV channel modeling approaches, and outline future research challenges in this domain.

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A Survey of Channel Modeling for UAV Communications

In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), particularly for small UAVs, due to their affordable prices, wide availability, and relative ease of operability. Existing and future applications of UAVs include remote surveillance and monitoring, relief operations, package delivery, and communication backhaul infrastructure. Additionally, UAVs are envisioned as an important component of 5G wireless technology and beyond. The unique application scenarios for UAVs necessitate accurate air-to-ground (AG) propagation channel models for designing and evaluating UAV communication links for control/non-payload as well as payload data transmissions. These AG propagation models have not been investigated in detail, relative to terrestrial propagation models. In this paper, a comprehensive survey is provided on available AG channel measurement campaigns, large and small scale fading channel models, their limitations, and future research directions for UAV communication scenarios.

A Survey of Air-to-Ground Propagation Channel Modeling for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

The scalable video coding (SVC) standard as an extension of H.264/AVC allows efficient, standard-based temporal, spatial, and quality scalability of video bit streams. Scalability of a video bit stream allows for media bit rate as well as for device capability adaptation. Moreover, adaptation of the bit rate of a video signal is a desirable key feature, if limitation in network resources, mostly characterized by throughput variations, varying delay or transmission errors, need to be considered. Typically, in mobile networks the throughput, delay and errors of a connection (link) depend on the current reception conditions, which are largely influenced by a number of physical factors. In order to cope with the typically varying characteristics of mobile communication channels in unicast, multicast, or broadcast services, different methods for increasing robustness and achieving quality of service are desirable. We will give an overview of SVC and its relation to mobile delivery methods. Furthermore, innovative use cases are introduced which apply SVC in mobile networks.

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Mobile Video Transmission Using Scalable Video Coding

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have found numerous applications and are expected to bring fertile business opportunities in the next decade. Among various enabling technologies for UAVs, wireless communication is essential and has drawn significantly growing attention in recent years. Compared to the conventional terrestrial communications, UAVs' communications face new challenges due to their high altitude above the ground and great flexibility of movement in the three-dimensional (3D) space. Several critical issues arise, including the line-of-sight (LoS) dominant UAV-ground channels and resultant strong aerial-terrestrial network interference, the distinct communication quality of service (QoS) requirements for UAV control messages versus payload data, the stringent constraints imposed by the size, weight and power (SWAP) limitations of UAVs, as well as the exploitation of the new design degree of freedom (DoF) brought by the highly controllable 3D UAV mobility. In this paper, we give a tutorial overview of the recent advances in UAV communications to address the above issues, with an emphasis on how to integrate UAVs into the forthcoming fifth-generation (5G) and future cellular networks. In particular, we partition our discussions into two promising research and application frameworks of UAV communications, namely UAV-assisted wireless communications and cellular-connected UAVs,where UAVs serve as aerial communication platforms and users, respectively. Furthermore, we point out promising directions for future research and investigation.

Accessing From The Sky: A Tutorial on UAV Communications for 5G and Beyond

The increased use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), better known as drones, by civilians has grown exponentially and its autonomous flight control systems have improved significantly, which has resulted in a greater number of accidents and dangerous situations. In this paper, we address the use of low-cost programmable Software Defined Radio (SDR) platforms for simulating a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), more specifically Global Positioning System (GPS) signals, in order to transmit false signals and induce a location error on the targeted GPS receiver. Using this approach, a defensive system was implemented which can divert, or even take control of unauthorized UAVs whose flight path depends on the information obtained by the GPS system.

Capture of UAVs Through GPS Spoofing

Single carrier transmissions with frequency domain equalization (SC-FDE) have gained widespread use in emergent broadband wireless systems becoming an attractive alternative to popular Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) schemes, particularly at the uplink. Since coherent receivers are usually employed with SC-FDE, accurate channel estimates are required so as to avoid substantial performance degradation. Several channel estimation strategies have been proposed for SC-FDE, but a thoroughly evaluation of the degradation caused by channel estimation errors and a comparison against OFDM is still lacking. In this paper we study the impact of imperfect channel knowledge on SC transmission with focus on the linear frequency domain equalizer (FDE) and on the Iterative Block Decision Feedback Equalizer (IB-DFE). We propose a modified IB-DFE which incorporates knowledge of the channel estimation error model and show that its performance becomes more robust against the presence of strong error components in the channel estimates. We also evaluate, analytically and through simulations, the degradation caused by imperfect channel estimation in SC-FDE and compare it against OFDM schemes (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing). It is shown that the channel estimation requirements for SC-FDE are higher than for OFDM unless a channel estimation error aware receiver is employed.

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Impact of Channel Estimation Errors on SC-FDE Systems

Internet of Things (IoT) uses the connection between devices to improve their efficiency and user experience, being the communication one of the main elements for a proper IoT network. This paper presents a review of the most common wired and wireless communication protocols, discusses their characteristics, advantages and disadvantages as well as a comparison study to choose the best bidirectional sensor network composed by low power devices such as Arduino, ESP-12 and Raspberry Pi.

Comparison of communication protocols for low cost Internet of Things devices

Lately, a rising number of incidents between unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and airplanes have been reported in airports and airfields. In order to help cope with the problem of unauthorized UAV operations, in this paper we evaluate the use of low cost SDR platforms (software defined radio) for the implementation of a jammer able to generate an effective interfering signal aimed at the GPS navigation system. Using a programmable BladeRF x40 platform from Nuand and the GNU radio software development toolkit, several interference techniques were studied and evaluated, considering the spectral efficiency, energy efficiency and complexity. It was shown that the tested approaches are capable of stopping the reliable reception of the radionavigation signal in real-life scenarios, neutralizing the capacity for autonomous operation of the vehicle.

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Effective GPS Jamming Techniques for UAVs Using Low-Cost SDR Platforms

The analytical bit error rate of hierarchical quadrature amplitude modulation formats, which include uniform and nonuniform constellations, over flat Rayleigh fading environments is studied in this paper. The analysis takes into account the effect of imperfect channel estimation and considers diversity reception with both independent identically and nonidentically distributed channels, employing maximal ratio combining.

Nuno Souto

Papers

Capture of UAVs Through GPS Spoofing

Impact of Channel Estimation Errors on SC-FDE Systems

Comparison of communication protocols for low cost Internet of Things devices

Effective GPS Jamming Techniques for UAVs Using Low-Cost SDR Platforms

On the BER Performance of Hierarchical $M$ -QAM Constellations With Diversity and Imperfect Channel Estimation