What is A Wireless UAV? A Design Blueprint for 6G Flying Wireless Nodes

TL;DR

This paper defines wireless UAVs for 6G, discusses design challenges, and introduces a new prototype that will be publicly available to advance research in future wireless networks.

Contribution

It provides a precise definition of wireless UAVs for 6G and presents a novel prototype addressing key design challenges.

Findings

Identifies major design challenges in wireless UAV prototyping

Proposes a new wireless UAV prototype for 6G

Plans to release the prototype publicly

Abstract

Wireless Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) were introduced in the world of 4th generation networks (4G) as cellular users, and have attracted the interest of the wireless community ever since. In~5G, UAVs operate also as flying Base Stations providing service to ground users. They can also implement independent off-the-grid UAV networks. In~6G networks, wireless UAVs will connect ground users to in-orbit wireless infrastructure. As the design and prototyping of wireless UAVs are on the rise, the time is ripe for introducing a more precise definition of what is a wireless UAV. In doing so, we revise the major design challenges in the prototyping of wireless UAVs for future 6G spectrum research. We then introduce a new wireless UAV prototype that addresses these challenges. The design of our wireless UAV prototype will be made public and freely available to other researchers.