Circuits and Systems Design for UAV Swarm Enabled Communications

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Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been recently proposed as a solution for mobile wireless infrastructure. Majority of research on UAV-based communications considers either a single UAV or multiple UAVs as independent entities. This project aims to explore the benefits of utilizing multiple coordinated UAVs, also known as the UAV Swarm, within the emerging fog radio access networks (Fog-RAN). By leveraging the mobility of UAVs with on-board radios and processor, and the distributed processing within the swarm, the proposed system aims to enable various on-demand applications of internet-of-things (IoT) and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless access with improved energy efficiency and spectral efficiency. Due to its ease of deployment, the UAV swarm assisted Fog-RAN can serve underprivileged communities and accommodate fluctuations in capacity demands during emergency or other event-driven applications.This project addresses a set of unique challenges in circuits and systems arising in UAV swarm communications: i) swarm array synchronization and backhaul, ii) distributed processing on the edge devices, and iii) UAV swarm placement for optimized link budget and distributed MIMO channel capacity. Two different swarm systems will be explored: 1) weakly coordinated swarm with light swarm synchronization and simple coordination protocol, and 2) strongly coordinated swarm that requires tight synchronization and distributed array processing. For weakly coordinated swarm, low-complexity synchronization and coordination algorithms, low-power RF circuits and baseband processing, with only a single antenna in each radio, will be designed. For strongly coordinated swarm, a hybrid RF and base-band processing for frequency, phase, and time synchronization, and novel array signal processing for distributed MIMO combining within UAV swarm, will be designed to enable coherent transmission. The framework for UAV swarm placement to achieve optimal capacity and range will be developed and analyzed for robustness against channel, location, and actuation uncertainties. A proof-of-concept prototype using off-the-shelf UAVs and a radio testbed with customized RF components will be built and tested in the air.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.