Frontier Progress of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Optical Wireless Technologies

Abstract

With the continuous maturity of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in materials, communications, and other related technologies, the UAV industry has developed rapidly in recent years. In order to cope with the diversified emerging business forms, the explosive growth of the scale of data traffic, number of terminal connections, high reliability, low-latency, and high transmission rate provided by the fifth generation (5G) network will inject new vitality into the development of the UAVs industry. In this paper, optical wireless technology is introduced into the UAV platform, combining theory with practical applications. We explain many research advances and key technologies in the four aspects of “air, space, earth, and sea” to achieve a strong and broadband communication link. This discussion focuses on link modeling, parameter optimization, experimental testing, and the status quo of UAVs in different application scenarios with optical wireless link configurations. At the same time, based on the current situation of UAV optical wireless technology, the technical problems and the research direction in the future are also discussed.

Tracking Efficiency Improvement According to Incident Beam Size in QPD-Based PAT System for Common Path-Based Full-Duplex FSO Terminals

“…The use of the millimeter wave band by fifth-generation mobile communication have increased, and the rapid depletion of the existing radio frequency spectrum have intensified. This phenomenon drives the development of ultra-broadband free space optical (FSO) communication, FSO-based application services, and an FSO-based network [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ]. FSO communication features several advantages including no spectrum licensing, low-power consumption, electromagnetic interference immunity, enhanced channel security, and long-distance high-speed transmission [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ].…”

Performance of UAV-to-Ground FSO Communications with APD and Pointing Errors

“…In these cases, free-space optical (FSO) communications, a cost-effective, license-free, easy-to-deploy, high-bandwidth, and secure access technique, is being viewed as a potential candidate for the front-hauling transmission of multimedia data collected by flying UAVs from the CP [6][7][8][9][10][11]. For these reasons, FSO communication technology was naturally incorporated with UAV technology in order to establish high-speed optical communication networks in ground-to-air, air-to-ground, and air-to-air situations.…”

An Efficient Conformal Stacked Antenna Array Design and 3D-Beamforming for UAV and Space Vehicle Communications

“…Several array structures can be applied in various applications including linear, two-dimensional, circular, conical, cylindrical, spherical, and even nonuniform array structures [ 3 ]. However, some applications require specific designs in which the antenna array should be fixed on the body structure, such as airborne systems, missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), space shuttles, rockets, and even maybe on the surface of satellite fairings [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ]. Most of these structures have a tapered front shape which is almost configured as cylindrical with conical tips to improve the aerodynamic performance and reduce wind resistance.…”

“…In addition, the very long distance spanned by space vehicles, such as those travelling to Mars, requires high gain and efficient adaptive conformal antennas to ensure high quality of the communication link. Several conformal antenna array structures have been proposed in the literature [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 ], where most of them are fabricated in the form of microstrip patch antennas printed on a conical surface [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ] or slotted cylindrical and conical structures [ 15 , 16 ]. For example, in [ 17 ], a conical array was designed for radar applications using genetic algorithm to reduce sidelobe levels.…”