The progress beyond the state of the art has been focused in two different subjects.
i) Design and theoretical analysis of the UAV communication framework: This work included the investigation for the communication requirements and limitations of UAVs that identified risks and requirements for the future UAV networks. The communication solution involved the use of UAV-mounted reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) as an important and timely topic. Therefore, the investigation was focused on the use of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) mounted on UAVs to assist the communication of a remote area that has no direct link with the end user. Furthermore, the fellow devised an energy model that considers the UAV and the RIS weight as well as the UAV’s velocity and environment. In the results, the average throughput and the average data per flight were analyzed to prove that there exists a unique number of reflecting elements that optimizes the data collection procedure. Therefore, increasing the RIS size may lead to deteriorated data collection, which indicates the importance of the energy model.
ii) After the implementation of the HERMES platform, there was a need for a use case to demonstrate the benefits of the solution. The idea that was employed was that UAVs can be used to power Internet of Things (IoT) devices in inaccessible locations. Specifically, there are cases where the IoT devices are inaccessible and, thus, charging them is prohibitive. For instance, powering IoT devices attached on rotating machinery, dams, bridges, or contaminated areas by physical access would not only be expensive, but also dangerous. Therefore, novel ways of charging inaccessible IoT devices have to be studied that are safe and inexpensive. UAVs with wireless power transfer capabilities could provide a safe and inventive solution to the charging problem, but as the number of IoT nodes grows exponentially, the UAV network scales horizontally too, requiring an autonomous UAV orchestration to handle the large-scale IoT charging operation. Therefore, the fellow devised an architecture in which a UAV swarm covers the energy demand of an IoT network, while the UAVs fulfil their energy needs through charging stations (CSs).
The main benefit of the HERMES solution is that it provides the flexibility to be used like a UAV-network-as-a-service. Therefore, it can be applied in a multiverse of use cases, allowing to create new market opportunities and provide important benefits for society.
