Advanced Communication and Networking Technologies for Aerial-Terrestrial Systems

Aerial-Terrestrial systems that integrate unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and satellites into terrestrial communication systems are promising to provide better network access while facilitating various applications such as traffic control, video streaming, rescue and search, and communication relaying. On one hand, UAVs could be connected with cellular networks such as 5G NR (new radio) and the future 6G networks to significantly improve the network performance including delay, throughput, reliability, and security. On the other hand, aerial systems such as UAVs could be flexibly deployed as aerial mobile base stations (BSs) or access points (APs) in different scenarios to realize the swift, flexible and reliable communication networks. Due to these benefits, Aerial-Terrestrial systems can provide a wide range of applications such as task offloading, information collection for Internet-of-Things (IoTs), and communication relay.

In the Aerial-Terrestrial systems, owing to the high altitude of UAVs as compared to terrestrial users, the channel characteristics of the UAV-to-Terrestrial communication links are quite different from existing terrestrial networks. Thus the power limitations, mobility control, and communication resource allocation remain complicated, which poses challenges to the design of the aerial and terrestrial integrated system. Also, there are still potential challenges for UAVs to bring intelligent computation capability to existing terrestrial networks, especially for some applications such as IoT and smart cities. Fortunately, the recent development of communication and networking technologies including energy harvesting, wireless power transfer, fog computing, cooperative communications, user cooperation, convex optimization, and artificial intelligence may provide efficient ways to help solve these problems.

This research topic focuses on the novel communication and networking technologies for Aerial-Terrestrial systems, including, but not limited to, the following topics：

- Communication technologies for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Network architecture for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Network protocols for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Platform technology for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Quality of services and routing technology for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Measurement and control technology for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Security defense technology for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Network management for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Cloud computing, mobile edge computing, and fog computing for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Software-defined networking technology for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Information processing technology for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Ground mobile communication technology for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Space optical communication technology for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Satellite mobile communication technology for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Unmanned aerial vehicles for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Internet-of-Things and Internet-of-Vehicles for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Artificial intelligence for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Applications for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Information processing technology for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Ground mobile communication technology for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Space optical communication technology for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Satellite mobile communication technology for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Unmanned aerial vehicles for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Internet-of-Things and Internet-of-Vehicles for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Artificial intelligence for Aerial-Terrestrial systems
- Applications for Aerial-Terrestrial systems