Open Access

ARTICLE

Efficient UAV Communications: Recent Trends and Challenges

Abdulfattah Noorwali¹, Muhammad Awais Javed², Mohammad Zubair Khan^3,*

1 Department of Electrical Engineering, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, 21961, Saudi Arabia
2 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, COMSATS University Islamabad, 45550, Pakistan
3 Department of Computer Science, College of Computer Science and Engineering, Taibah University Madinah, Saudi Arabia

* Corresponding Author: Mohammad Zubair Khan. Email:

Computers, Materials & Continua 2021, 67(1), 463-476. https://doi.org/10.32604/cmc.2021.014668

Received 07 October 2020; Accepted 03 November 2020; Issue published 12 January 2021

Abstract

Unmanned Ariel Vehicles (UAVs) are flying objects whose trajectory can be remotely controlled. UAVs have lot of potential applications in the areas of wireless communications, internet of things, security, traffic management, monitoring, and smart surveying. By enabling reliable communication between UAVs and ground nodes, emergency notifications can be efficiently and quickly disseminated to a wider area. UAVs can gather data from remote areas, industrial units, and emergency scenarios without human involvement. UAVs can support ubiquitous connectivity, green communications, and intelligent wireless resource management. To efficiently use UAVs for all these applications, important challenges need to be investigated. In this paper, we first present a detailed classification of UAVs based on factors such as their size, communication range, weight, and flight altitude. We also explain the hardware system configuration and uses of these UAVs. We present a brief overview of recent work done related to three major challenges in UAVs. These challenges include trajectory control, energy efficiency and resource allocation. We also present three open challenges and future opportunities for efficient UAV communications. These include use of learning algorithms for resource allocation and energy efficiency in UAVs, intelligent surfaces-based communications for enhanced reliability in UAVs, and security algorithms to combat malicious attacks against UAVs.

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Citations