What is A Wireless UAV? A Design Blueprint for 6G Flying Wireless Nodes
This work provides a foundational blueprint for researchers designing wireless UAVs in 6G, though it is incremental as it builds on existing UAV roles from 4G and 5G.
The paper tackles the lack of a precise definition for wireless UAVs in 6G networks and revises design challenges for prototyping, introducing a new prototype that addresses these issues and will be made publicly available.
Wireless Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) were introduced in the world of 4th generation networks (4G) as cellular users, and have attracted the interest of the wireless community ever since. In~5G, UAVs operate also as flying Base Stations providing service to ground users. They can also implement independent off-the-grid UAV networks. In~6G networks, wireless UAVs will connect ground users to in-orbit wireless infrastructure. As the design and prototyping of wireless UAVs are on the rise, the time is ripe for introducing a more precise definition of what is a wireless UAV. In doing so, we revise the major design challenges in the prototyping of wireless UAVs for future 6G spectrum research. We then introduce a new wireless UAV prototype that addresses these challenges. The design of our wireless UAV prototype will be made public and freely available to other researchers.