A Bibliometric Analysis of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) Implementation in Cellular Network

Abstract

With many opportunities for UAV application in the cellular sector, the potential for research development related to UAV implementation is also a fascinating topic to be observed. The user equipment in a cellular network may be a UAV. As aerial base stations that can establish connections between ground nodes A and B, as wireless backhaul to the cellular network, or as support to offer communication services to areas after natural disasters, cellular network operators may use UAVs. The research gives a representative insight into UAV implementation in the cellular sector is fascinating and challenging. Considering that this topic still has significant development opportunities in the future, more upcoming research is needed to provide an overview of the implementation of UAVs in the cellular field, which is visualized in the distribution of each research topic. This work aims to analyze the scientific production of the last twenty years on using UAVs in cellular networks. The primary goal is to stress issues that have not yet been publicly discussed as a future research opportunity. We applied bibliometric techniques and analyzed the literature on Unmanned Aerial vehicles (UAV) or drone implementation in the cellular network to summarize and assess previous research and visualize each research topic's distribution.