Recent years have witnessed an unprecedented growth in the volume of Internet data flow as well as in the number of devices connected to the Internet. Apart from traditional handheld mobile terminals, the use of civilian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) that allow capturing and streaming video in real-time is steadily increasing. The technology for civil drones is maturing and there is potential for significant growth and job creation. On some estimates in the next 10 years it could be worth around 10% of the whole aviation market. Such rapidly growing market is going to pose important challenges on the future 5G/6G terrestrial networks. Although for the time being civilian UAV platforms are mainly meant to stream first person view (FPV) videos directly to the user terminal on unlicensed frequency bands, streaming directly on the Internet or private networks is going to become a concrete possibility soon. If on the one hand drones constitute a challengefrom a communication perspective, on the other hand they can be a potential asset for next generation mobile networks, by helping to provide missing coverage or “on demand” additional capacity.
The goal of the present project was two-fold. The first goal was to develop new approaches to jointly optimize video and image production and transmission from civil UAV’s over wireless networks with focus of UAV-specific requirements such as low delay requirements and high mobility. The second goal was to exploit the unique 3D mobility capability of drones to assist mobile networks by providing additional capacity and missing coverage.
Both goals of the project have been achieved by delivering original results, ranging from fundamental theoretical limits to video compression and streaming to practical low-complexity algorithms and development of proof-of-concept prototypes. Several top-ranked publications have been published and others are being finalized for submission.
