Tremendous growth in the application of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or drones, has been observed in recent years. This is occurring not only in defence, but also in civil applications. It is thus crucial that UAVs can be flown safely and reliably.
To achieve this, UAVs and their associated ground stations, require ultra-reliable, low-latency, and highly secure communication links. Such links must support critical commands, facilitate signaling, and ensure high capacity data communication capable of transferring information, including video, securely between the UAV and the base station.
Professor Zhang Rui, who has been listed as a Highly Cited Researcher by Thomson Reuters/Clarivate Analytics since 2015, is working on solutions that meet these requirements.
One effort is focused on optimising the design and performance of wireless communication networks by leveraging on the cellular network for UAV communications.
Cellular-connected UAVs represent a promising technology that achieves the above goal. Here, UAVs operate on existing and future cellular networks. Compared to the traditional ground-to- UAV communications via point-to-point links, cellular-connected UAVs have several advantages including ubiquitous accessibility, better performance, ease of monitoring, management, and navigation. They are also more cost-effective.
Prof Zhang is also looking into enhancing power transfer networks for UAVs. For example, the UAV-enabled wireless power transfer (WPT) technique may provide a sustainable energy supply for widely distributed low-power ground devices (GDs) in large-scale wireless networks.
To this end, Prof Zhang and his team have designed a framework to optimise UAV trajectory that considers the maximum charge of ground devices. In this case, the devices may be operating over a large area, and be in communication with multiple UAVs.
A technology that uses tiny smart devices known as spin-torque oscillators (STOs) to harvest and convert wireless radio frequencies into energy to power small electronics
Incorporating conductive textiles into clothing to interconnect several wearable devices together at once
As part of LTA’s expanded AV trial, the AV developed by SMART and NUS SCOT will be tested on the roads of the NUS Kent Ridge campus
Zeng, Y., Xu, X., Jin, S., & Zhang, R. (2021). Simultaneous navigation and radio mapping for cellular-connected UAV with deep reinforcement learning. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 20 (7), 4205-4220.
Ezuma, M., Erden, F., Kumar Anjinappa, C., Ozdemir, O., Guvenc, I., & Matolak, D. (2020). UAV Detection and Identification. UAV Communications for 5G and Beyond, 71-102.
Zeng, Y., Wu, Q., & Zhang, R. (2019). Accessing from the sky: A tutorial on UAV communications for 5G and beyond. Proceedings of the IEEE, 107 (12), 2327-2375.
Zeng, Y., Lyu, J., & Zhang, R. (2018). Cellular-connected UAV: Potential, challenges, and promising technologies. IEEE Wireless Communications, 26 (1), 120-127.
Wu, Q., Zeng, Y., & Zhang, R. (2018). Joint trajectory and communication design for multi-UAV enabled wireless networks. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 17 (3), 2109-2121.
More Researchers