Emerging Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Communication Techniques for the Next Generation of Wireless Networks

Dear Colleagues,

For several years, the academic and industrial communities have been sustainably elaborating on in-depth explorations and comprehensive innovations of B5/6G technology. Briefly, B5/6G aims to achieve seamless coverage, ultra-reliability, and ultra-low latency. At the same time, B5/6G is challenged by the explosive growth in the number of communication devices, increasingly severe communication security issues, and the challenge of communication reliability caused by interference. UAVs have been widely used in assisting wireless networks due to their advantages of low cost, flexible deployment, and high mobility, especially in communication scenarios in hard-to-reach areas (e.g., fire and earthquake-affected areas). In particular, with the advancement of artificial intelligence, movement and communication strategies can be guided and flexibly adjusted using learning-based approaches.

This Special Issue aims to outline the recent progress made on the latest techniques in enhancing the performance of UAV-assisted next-generation wireless networks. Specifically, the performance includes, but is not limited to, energy efficiency, high reliability, high security, and low latency:

• AI for energy/spectrum efficient resource management in UAV networks;
• Cooperative mobility edge computing in UAV networks;
• Relaying techniques for UAV networks;
• Interference mitigation in UAV networks;
• Intelligent trajectory planning for UAV networks;
• AI for anti-jamming in UAV networks;
• Anti-eavesdropping techniques in UAV networks;
• Beamforming and waveform design for UAV communications nodes;
• Low-latency UAV swarm networks;
• Routing protocol for UAV swarm networks;
• UAV semantic communication;
• Integrated sensing and communication applications in UAV-assisted networks;
• Reconfigurable intelligent surface-assisted UAV communications.

Submissions focused on the various advanced analytical algorithms and technological innovations used to enhance the performance of UAV networks are welcome.

Dr. Nan Qi
Prof. Dr. Rugui Yao
Dr. Xiang Su
Prof. Dr. Liang Xiao
Dr. Lin Zhang
Guest Editors

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