Cyber-physical framework for UAV intelligent communications

Abstract

To relieve the communication bottleneck problem of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), this study discusses an intelligent communication framework for UAVs from a cyber-physical perspective where the interdependence among communication, computation, and control is fully exploited. First, we illustrate the coupling effects of computation and control on communication and investigate some related works. Then, a novel cyber-physical framework for UAV communications is proposed, and the key functions of each module are demonstrated. The framework expands the dimension of communication decisions to computation and control and thus can orient and address communication issues more precisely. These provide inspiration for the integrated design of communication, computation, and control. Furthermore, a case study is presented to show the communication optimization based on the proposed framework. Meanwhile, the simulation results verify the effectiveness and superiority of the framework.