Accessing from the Sky: UAV Challenges from a Communication and Signal Processing Perspective

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones have found numerous applications in wireless communication, as either an aerial user terminal or a mobile access point (AP). Compared to conventional terrestrial wireless systems, UAVs' communications face new challenges due to their high altitude above the ground and great flexibility of movement. This brings several crucial issues such as: 1) how to exploit line-of-sight (LoS) dominant UAV-ground channels while mitigating resulted strong interference; 2) how to meet distinct UAV communication requirements on critical control messages versus high-rate payload data; 3) how to cater to the stringent constraints imposed by the size, weight, and power (SWAP) limitations of UAVs; and 4) how to leverage the new degree of freedom via controlling the UAV trajectory for communication performance enhancement. In this talk, we will provide an overview of the above challenges and practical issues in UAV communications, their state-of-the-art solutions (with an emphasis on promising signal processing and optimization techniques used in them), as well as important directions for future research.