PIMRC 2018 Workshop W2: UAV Communications for 5G and Beyond

Date: Sunday, September 9. Time: 9.00 – 17.30

Workshop Organiser(s): Chiara Buratti, University of Bologna (Italy); Adrian Garcia-Rodriguez, Nokia Bell Labs (Ireland); Gianluigi Ferrari, University of Parma (Italy); Ming Ding, Data61, CSIRO (Australia)

Motivation and Background

All but unheard of until just recently, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are now envisioned to shape the future of technology. They are among the best candidates to automate emergency search-and-rescue missions, enable crowd management and parcel delivery, and act as relays to provide cellular coverage extension and ad-hoc capacity boost.

Terrestrial cellular networks are well positioned to provide a communication link towards UAVs flying up to an altitude of few hundred meters. Indeed, the 3GPP has been gathering industrial players to enhance cellular support for aerial vehicles. Although connecting UAVs through cellular technologies has key potential advantages – such as reusing existing network infrastructure and spectrum resources – it also involves important challenges that need to be addressed. Simultaneously, the academic community is providing a large number of analytical studies to assess the potential of using UAVs as mobile base stations. This is because UAVs enable flexible networks since they can fly when and where it is needed, helping the terrestrial base stations to improve coverage and capacity. However, UAVs may also present a new threat to citizen safety, and the development of methods to enable a fast, reliable, and autonomous detection of malicious UAVs is essential.

This workshop will bring together academic and industrial experts in the field of UAVs and, part of it, is inspired by the COST Action CA15104 IRACON. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

– Network architectures for UAV communications                      – Cyber security and physical security of UAV communications

– Optimal placement/paths design for UAV base stations          – Multi-antenna systems for UAV communications

– Field-trials and prototyping for UAV communications              – Radio channel models for inter- and intra-UAV communications

– Simulation studies of UAV communications                               – Theoretical frameworks for the analysis of UAV communications

– Radio Resource Management for UAV communications         – Cooperation among UAVs and inter-UAV communications

– Spectrum sensing techniques for UAVs detection                    – Machine learning and signal processing techniques for UAVs

– Tracking and Localization techniques using UAVs                     – Regulations, and standardization for UAV communications

Keynote speakers

Prof. Rui Zhang, National University of Singapore (Singapore)

Dr. Davide Dardari, University of Bologna (Italy)

Prof. Roberto Verdone, University of Bologna (Italy)

 

Submission Guidelines

Prospective authors are invited to submit technical papers of their previously unpublished work. Accepted workshop papers will be part of the Conference Proceedings and will be uploaded to IEEE Xplore. Papers should be submitted via EDAS; the links are available at http://pimrc2018.ieee-pimrc.org under “Authors”. Papers should follow the same Author guidelines of the general symposium, which are available at http://pimrc2018.ieee-pimrc.org/authors/submission-guidelines/.

 

Key Dates

Paper submission: May 18, 2018

Acceptance notification: June 15, 2018

Final paper due: June 29, 2018

Steering/Technical Committee

Dr. Giovanni Geraci, Nokia Bell Labs (Ireland)                                            Dr. Emil Björnson, Linköping University (Sweden)

Prof. Mahbub Hassan, UNSW (Australia)                                                    Dr. Lorenzo Galati Giordano, Nokia Bell Labs (Ireland)