The Rise of UAV Fleet Technologies for Emergency Wireless Communications in Harsh Environments

For unforeseen emergencies, such as natural disasters and pandemic events, it is highly demanded to cope with the explosive growth of mobile data traffic in extremely critical environments. An Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) fleet is an effective way to facilitate the Emergency wireless COmmunication NETwork (EcoNet). In this article, a MUlti-tier Heterogeneous UAV Network (MuHun), which is with different UAV fleets in different altitudes, is proposed to flexibly serve various emergencies. We refresh the key performance indicators of full coverage, network capacity, low latency, and energy efficiency in harsh environments. Then, we present the special challenges regarding shadowing-dominated complex channel model, energy supply limited short-endurance, various communication mechanisms coexistence, and communication island for underground users in UAV-based EcoNet, followed by the MuHun-based EcoNet architecture and its advantages. Furthermore, some potential solutions such as the new hybrid-channel adapted resource allocation, reconfigurable intelligent surface assisted UAV communications, competitive heterogenous-networks, and magnetic induction based air-to-ground/underground communications are discussed to effectively achieve full coverage, high capacity, high energy efficiency, and diverse qualities of services for EcoNets in harsh environments.

Resource Allocation for 5G-UAV Based Emergency Wireless Communications

For unforeseen natural disasters, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods, etc., the traditional communication infrastructure is unavailable or seriously disrupted along with persistent secondary disasters. Under such circumstances, it is highly demanded to deploy emergency wireless communication (EWC) networks to restore connectivity in accident/incident areas. The emerging fifth-generation (5G)/beyond-5G (B5G) wireless communication system, like unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) assisted networks and intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) based communication systems, are expected to be designed or re-farmed for supporting temporary high quality communications in post-disaster areas. However, the channel characteristics of post-disaster areas quickly change as the secondary disaster resulted topographical changes, imposing new but critical challenges for EWC networks. In this paper, we propose a novel heterogeneous $\mathcal{F}$ composite fading channel model for EWC networks which accurately models and characterizes the composite fading channel with reflectors, path-loss exponent, fading, and shadowing parameters in 5G-UAV based EWC networks. Based on the model, we develop the optimal power allocation scheme with the simple closed-form expression and the numerical results based optimal joint bandwidth-power allocation scheme. We derive the corresponding capacities and compare the energy efficiency between IRS and traditional relay based 5G-UAVs. Numerical results show that the new heterogeneous Fisher-Snedecor $\mathcal{F}$ composite fading channel adapted resource allocation schemes can achieve higher capacity and energy efficiency than those of traditional channel model adapted resource allocation schemes, thus providing better communications service for post-disaster areas.

Integrated Sensing and Communication for Anti-Jamming with OAM

The spectrum share and open nature of wireless channels enable integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) susceptible to hostile jamming attacks. Due to the intrinsic orthogonality and rich azimuth angle information of orbital angular momentum (OAM), vortex electromagnetic waves with helical phase fronts have shown great potential to achieve high-resolution imaging and strong anti-jamming capability of wireless communication. Focusing on significantly enhancing the anti-jamming results of ISAC systems with limited bandwidth under hostile jamming, in this paper we propose a novel ISAC for anti-jamming with OAM scheme, where the OAM legitimate transmitter can simultaneously sense the position of jammers with dynamic behavior and send data to multiple OAM legitimate users. Specifically, the OAM modes for sensing and communications are respectively hopped according to pre-set index modulation information to suppress jamming. To acquire the position of the jammer, we develop the enhanced multiple-signal-classification-based three-dimension position estimation scheme with continuous sensing in both frequency and angular domains, where the OAM transmitter is designed with the concentric uniform-circular-array mono-static method, to significantly increase the azimuthal resolution. Then, based on the acquired jamming channel state information, we develop the joint transmit-receive beamforming and power allocation scheme, where the transmit and receive beamforming matrices are dynamically adjusted to mitigate the mixed interference containing inter-mode interference, inter-user interference, and jamming, thus maximizing the achievable sum rates (ASRs) of all users. Numerical results demonstrate that our proposed scheme can significantly increase the ASR under broadband jamming attacks and achieve high detection accuracy of targets .