Unmanned aerial vehicle: a review and future directions

Abstract

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will be crucial in the next generation of wireless communications infrastructure. When compared to traditional ground-based solutions, it is expected that their use in a variety of communication-based applications will increase coverage and spectrum efficiency. In this paper, we provide a detailed review of all relevant research works as follows. This paper presents types of UAVs (e.g., wireless coverage, military, agriculture, medical applications, environment, and climate, and delivery and transportation), characteristics of UAVs (e.g., node density, altering system topology, node mobility, radio broadcasting mode, frequency band, localization, and power consumption and network lifetime), the application of UAVs (e.g., Multi-UAV cooperation, UAV-to-VANET collaborations, and UAV-to-ground tasks). Additionally, this paper reviews the routing protocols of UAVs (e.g., topology-based, position-based, heterogeneous, delay-tolerant networks (DTNs), swarm-Based, and cluster-based) and simulation tools (e.g., OMNeT++, AVENS, MATLAB, NS3, SUMO, and OPNET). The design and development of any new methods for UAVs may use this work as a guide and reference.