UAV-empowered Surveillance and Communication
Brief:
UAVs have been widely used in monitoring and surveillance. Our focus is on several key issues: coverage, connectivity, and energy limitation. Where to deploy the UAVs is critical to the system performance. System designers usually expect that the UAVs can have good coverage of the targets of interest, such as humans, vehicles, agriculture sites, etc. When the UAVs form a network, they need to maintain a connected graph for the collaboration purpose. Energy is another important factor influencing the deployment of flying robots since the current commercial ones are mostly powered by limited onboard batteries. Another aspect is to develop algorithms that can assist UAVs to conduct search and rescue missions. There are two fundamental issues in this application: the full coverage of an area of interest and the effective detection of targets. The former aims at constructing a set of trajectories for UAVs so that the revisit time of the area is minimized. The latter requires sensing tools to detect the target accurately.
UAVs can be a new type of aerial user and can also assist existing access points to serve users. No matter which role they play, wireless communications is the main way to contact other parties. One particular focus is on the deployment of UAV base stations (UAV-BSs) to provide better service to ground users. Security is also of concern. Because of the nature of broadcast and the high probability of line-of-sight with other parties, the wireless communications of UAVs is prone to security issues. Specifically, what is sent by UAVs can be easily overheard by a malicious node, and the information sent to UAVs can also be spoofed (consider how RQ-170 was captured). Therefore, securing UAV communications is a foundation for further applying UAVs in different domains.
Published papers related to this project:
Andrey V. Savkin, Hailong Huang, Multi-UAV Navigation for Optimized Video Surveillance of Ground Vehicles on Uneven Terrains, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2023.
Hailong Huang, Andrey Savkin, Aerial Surveillance in Cities: When UAVs Take Public Transportation Vehicles, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, 2022
Xiaohui Li, Hailong Huang, Andrey V Savkin, Autonomous Navigation of an Aerial Drone to Observe a Group of Wild Animals with Reduced Visual Disturbance, IEEE Systems Journal, 2021.
Andrey V. Savkin, Hailong Huang, Navigation of a UAV Network for Optimal Surveillance of a Group of Ground Targets Moving Along a Road, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2021
Hailong Huang, Andrey Savkin, Wei Ni, Online UAV Trajectory Planning for Covert Video Surveillance of Mobile Targets, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, 2021
Hailong Huang, Andrey Savkin, Navigating UAVs for Optimal Monitoring of Groups of Moving Pedestrians or Vehicles, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 2021
Hailong Huang, Andrey Savkin, Chao Huang, Decentralised Autonomous Navigation of a UAV Network for Road Traffic Monitoring, IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, 2021
Andrey V. Savkin, Hailong Huang, Bio-inspired Bearing Only Motion Camouflage UAV Guidance for Covert Video Surveillance of a Moving Target, IEEE Systems Journal, 2020
Andrey V. Savkin, Hailong Huang, Navigation of a Network of Aerial Drones for Monitoring a Frontier of a Moving Environmental Disaster Area, IEEE Systems Journal, 2020.
Hailong Huang, Andrey Savkin, Xiaohui Li, Reactive Autonomous Navigation of UAVs for Dynamic Sensing Coverage of Mobile Ground Targets, Sensors, 2020.
Hailong Huang, Andrey Savkin, Reactive 3D deployment of a flying robotic network for surveillance of mobile targets, Computer Networks, 2019.
Hailong Huang, Andrey Savkin, An Algorithm of Reactive Collision Free 3D Deployment of Networked Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Surveillance and Monitoring, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 2019.
Andrey V. Savkin, Hailong Huang, A Method for Optimized Deployment of a Network of Surveillance Aerial Drones, IEEE Systems Journal, 2019.
Andrey V. Savkin, Hailong Huang, Asymptotically Optimal Deployment of Drones for Surveillance and Monitoring, Sensors, 2019.
Andrey V. Savkin, Hailong Huang, Proactive Deployment of Aerial Drones for Coverage over Very Uneven Terrains: A Version of the 3D Art Gallery Problem, Sensors, 2019.
Mingyang Lyu, Yibo Zhao, Chao Huang, Hailong Huang, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Search and Rescue: A Survey, Remote Sensing, 2023.
Andrey Savkin, Hailong Huang, Asymptotically Optimal Path Planning for Ground Surveillance by a Team of UAVs, IEEE Systems Journal, 2021.
Jian Zhang, Hailong Huang, Occlusion-Aware UAV Path Planning for Reconnaissance and Surveillance, Drones, 2021
Hailong Huang, Andrey V Savkin, Deployment of Heterogeneous UAV Base Stations for Optimal Quality of Coverage, IEEE Internet of Things Journal. 2022
Andrey V. Savkin, Hailong Huang, Range-based reactive deployment of autonomous drones for optimal coverage in disaster areas, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems, 2021.
Hailong Huang, Andrey V Savkin, Ming Ding, Mohamed Ali Kaafar, Optimized deployment of drone base station to improve user experience in cellular networks, Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 2019.
Hailong Huang, Andrey Savkin, A Method for Optimized Deployment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Maximum Coverage and Minimum Interference in Cellular Networks. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 2019.
Hailong Huang, Andrey Savkin, An Algorithm of Efficient Proactive Placement of Autonomous Drones for Maximum Coverage in Cellular Networks, IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, 2018.
Andrey V. Savkin, Hailong Huang, Deployment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Base Stations for Optimal Quality of Coverage, IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, 2018.
Hailong Huang, Mohsen Eskandari, Andrey V. Savkin, Wei Ni, Energy-Efficient Joint UAV Secure Communication and 3D Trajectory Optimization Assisted by Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces in the Presence of Eavesdroppers, Defence Technology, 2022.
Mohsen Eskandari, Hailong Huang, Andrey V. Savkin, Wei Ni, Model Predictive Control-based 3D Navigation of a RIS-Equipped UAV for LoS Wireless Communication with a Ground Intelligent Vehicle, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles, 2022.
Hailong Huang, Andrey V. Savkin, Wei Ni, Decentralized Navigation of a UAV Team for Collaborative Covert Eavesdropping on a Group of Mobile Ground Nodes, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, 2022
Hailong Huang, Andrey V. Savkin, Wei Ni, Navigation of a UAV Team for Collaborative Eavesdropping on Multiple Ground Transmitters, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 2021
Hailong Huang, Andrey V. Savkin, Energy-Efficient Decentralized Navigation of a Team of Solar-powered UAVs for Collaborative Eavesdropping on a Mobile Ground Target in Urban Environments, Ad Hoc Networks, 2021.
Andrey V. Savkin, Hailong Huang, Wei Ni, Securing UAV Communication in the Presence of Stationary or Mobile Eavesdroppers via Online 3D Trajectory Planning, IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, 2020.