Leveraging public wireless communication infrastructures for UAV-based sensor networks

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) enable the in-depth reconnaissance and surveillance of major incidents. Uncontrolled emissions of liquid or gaseous contaminants in cases of volcanic eruptions, large fires, industrial incidents or terrorist attacks can be analyzed by utilizing UAVs (cf. Fig. 1). Hence, the use of cognitive Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) for distributing mobile sensors in incident areas is in general a significant value add for remote sensing, reconnaissance, surveillance and communication purposes [1][2]. Police departments, fire brigades and other homeland security organizations will have access to medium and small size UAVs in the near future and will integrate UAVs in their work flow. In this paper we are focusing on the civilian concepts of operations (CONOPS) for UAVs, in particular for small-scale UAVs. We present viable concepts on system level for leveraging public wireless communication networks for UAV-based sensor networks with respect to existing constraints and user requirements.