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.
Mr. Emini (T-Mobile Austria), Dr. Jeroen Wigard (Nokia Bell Labs), Dr. Challita (Ericsson) and myelf were panelists in IEEE WCNC 2019. The panel entitled ” Drone Networking: Technical Challenges and Business Opportunities” was organized by Dr. Fakhreddine and Dr. Bettstetter. We had a fruitful discussion on many topics including technical challenges inherent to the use of cellular-connected UAVs, regulatory aspects and security challenges in UAV networking, 5G and UAV networking, and the expected status of UAV networking for the next 5/10 years. 
We are organizing the 1st International Workshop on Internet of Autonomous Unmanned Vehicles (IAUV 2019) in conjunction with IEEE SECON 2019 – IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication and Networking.
The workshop will be held in Boston, MA, USA, on June 10th, 2019. The submission deadline is March 15, 2019. For details, please visit https://iauv2019.loria.fr/.
Selected authors will be invited to submit an extended version of their works to the MDPI Special Issue on « UAV-Based Applications in the Internet of Things (IoT) ». The special issue submission deadline is on July 15th, 2019.
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 research at Klagenfurt focuses on many civil applications of drones. The following video illustrates the functionalities we can enable on quadrotor platforms tailored for disaster response. Specifically, we show multi-drone coordination supporting aerial surveillance, target detection, video streaming, delivery, navigation under forest canopy and human-drone interaction.
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.
We have tested our multi-UAV system for a search and rescue scenario, where we have demonstrated the planning, communication, and detection capabilities of the aerial network. Once the target is detected, a communication relay chain is formed from the UAVs to the ground station, streaming real-time video of the target. See the video of the demo here.
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.
Our paper, “Experimental Performance Analysis of Two-Hop Aerial 802.11 Networks” is accepted in IEEE Wireless Communication and Networking Conference 2014.
The paper focuses on deployment of standard WLAN technology for different network setups over an aerial network. It is experienced that certain setups not only offer network range extension, but also much lower variance in throughput. It is also seen that the standard routing protocol for 802.11s mesh lacks vastly in its implementation when applied to multihop aerial networks. Thus, there is a need to evaluate alternative mesh routing protocols that cater for aerial communication network demands.