Our paper entitled “Live multicast video streaming from drones: an experimental study” is accepted for publication in Autonomous Robots.
In this paper, we present and evaluate a multicast framework for point-to-multipoint and multipoint-to-point-to-multipoint video streaming. We evaluate the proposed application-layer rate-adaptive multicast video streaming over an aerial ad-hoc network that uses IEEE 802.11 in terms of goodput, delay, and packet loss.
Our paper entitled “Guarded by Gamora: How Access Control Balances Out Waiting Times in Transport Systems” is accepted for publication in International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC).
The paper considers a transport system with passengers traveling between stations in periodically arriving cabins. We propose and evaluate an access control algorithm that dynamically limits the number of passengers who are allowed to board the incoming cabin based on the passenger arrival and departure rates in subsequent stations.
Our paper entitled “Drone Networks: Communications, Coordination, and Sensing” is accepted for publication in Ad Hoc Networks Journal.
In this paper, we describe a high-level architecture for the design of a collaborative aerial system consisting of drones with on-board sensors and embedded processing, sensing, coordination, and communication and networking capabilities. We implement a multi-drone system consisting of quadcopters and demonstrate its potential in disaster assistance and area monitoring scenarios. Furthermore, we illustrate design challenges and present potential solutions based on the lessons learned so far.
Our survey entitled “Survey on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Networks for Civil Applications: A Communications Viewpoint” is accepted in IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials.
This comprehensive 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.
Our paper “An Autonomous Multi-UAV System for Search and Rescue,” is accepted in ACM MobiSys Workshop DroNet 2015 (Workshop on Micro Aerial Vehicle Networks, Systems, and Applications for Civilian Use).
This paper proposes and evaluates the modular architecture of the autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system for search and rescue missions demonstrated here. The system is implemented in the Robot Operating System (ROS) and is capable of providing a real-time video stream from a UAV to one or more base stations using a wireless communications infrastructure. The system supports a heterogeneous set of UAVs and camera sensors.
Our paper “Information Exchange and Decision Making in Micro Aerial Vehicle Networks for Cooperative Search,” is accepted for publication in accepted in IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems.
The article considers a network of autonomous micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) cooperatively searching for multiple stationary targets, with the objective to minimize the search time while considering sensing and communication limitations. We explore and classify the design options in multi-MAV cooperative search in two dimensions: information merging and decision making where each dimension can be either centralized or distributed. Algorithms are then introduced to analyze the effects of centralized or distributed coordination for minimizing the search time. We show that depending on the availability of information and capability of making decisions, the MAVs can search an area more efficiently if both information merging and decision making are distributed.
I was invited to give a talk at the FLYNET (Micro and Nano Aerial Vehicle Networks for Civilian Use) workshop held at ETH Zurich, 3-5 November 2014.
My talk was entitled “Communication and Cooperation in Multi-UAV Networks”, where I reported our latest results on multi-hop aerial networks using IEEE 802.11a, n, and ac technologies. Slides of my talk are available on request.
Our paper “Application-Driven Design of Aerial Communication Networks,” is accepted in May 2014 issue of IEEE Communications Magazine.
The paper discusses the communication requirements for making applications of micro aerial vehicle (MAV) networks a reality. We extract key functionalities expected in an MAV network and map these functionalities into building blocks that we use to identify the expected communication needs. Our findings indicate that while certain requirements of
MAV applications can be met with currently available technology, further research is required to address the scalability, heterogeneity, safety, and security aspects of multi-MAV systems.
Our paper “Neighbor Cardinality Estimation with Low-Power Transceivers: Implementation and Experimental Results,” is accepted in IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference- Spring 2014.
The paper provides a proof-of-concept and performance test of neighbor estimation algorithms with an implementation on low-power wireless sensor devices. We illustrate the challenges of implementing the recently proposed multi-feedback estimator (MFE) on Z1 sensor devices. We compare the performance of MFE to that of simple neighbor counting.
Our paper “Information Merging in Multi-UAV Cooperative Search,” is accepted in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2014.
The paper investigates probabilistic information merging strategies for cooperative search using multiple UAVs. The objective is to determine the impact of cooperation and type/amount of information exchange on search time and detection errors. Local occupancy grids are used to represent target existence, to update its belief with local observations and to merge information from other UAVs. Our merging strategies perform Bayes updates of the occupancy probabilities while considering realistic limitations in
sensing, communication and UAV movement—all of which are important for small-scale UAVs.