Integrating Cognitive Radio with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: An Overview

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) demand technologies so they can not only fly autonomously, but also communicate with base stations, flight controllers, computers, devices, or even other UAVs. Still, UAVs usually operate within unlicensed spectrum bands, competing against the increasing number of mobile devices and other wireless networks. Combining UAVs with Cognitive Radio (CR) may increase their general communication performance, thus allowing them to execute missions where the conventional UAVs face limitations. CR provides a smart wireless communication which, instead of using a transmission frequency defined in the hardware, uses software transmission. CR smartly uses free transmission channels and/or chooses them according to application’s requirements. Moreover, CR is considered a key enabler for deploying technologies that require high connectivity, such as Smart Cities, 5G, Internet of Things (IoT), and the Internet of Flying Things (IoFT). This paper presents an overview on the field of CR for UAV communications and its state-of-the-art, testbed alternatives for real data experiments, as well as specifications to build a simple and low-cost testbed, and indicates key opportunities and future challenges in the field.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Jan 27, 2021
Source ID
10.3390/s21030830

Entities

People

  • Guilherme Marcel Dias Santana
  • Kalinka Regina Lucas Jaquie Castelo Branco
  • Rogers S. Cristo

Organizations

  • Army Research Office

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Aerial Unmanned Vehicle Swarm Micro Periodontal Dentistry.
  • Enterprise Information Systems Architecture and Joint Command Capability Interoperability Support.
  • Systems Analysis and Design

Technology Areas

  • 5G
  • 5G - Internet of Things
  • Autonomy
  • Autonomy - UAVs