Unmanned Aerial Systems: Overview and Open Challenges

Open Access

Abstract

International audience ; Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) are attracting increasing attention since their introduction in many civil fields and after being solely dedicated to military applications. An UAS is composed of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), ground stations and data links. UAVs may form a Flying Ad Hoc Network (FANET), they can communicate with each other or with the ground infrastructure to deliver and exchange information. UAV network topology has a direct impact on the communication scheme, which can be centralized or decentralized. Trajectory and speed variation of UAVs are represented by mobility models. UAVs can move individually or within a group. To meet the requirements of an UAS, which are ensuring high coverage and high speed, new wireless data links are being developed while taking into account the frequency spectrum availability. In this paper we briefly present the general characteristics of UAS, UAV and FANET. We present UAV different current applications, and then we discuss features of their topologies. Next we investigate the different UAV mobility models applied to individuals and to groups. Finally, we present a review of the most important communication protocols proposed for UAS.