TY - JOUR
T1 - Connecting Disjoint Nodes Through a UAV-Based Wireless Network for Bridging Communication Using IEEE 802.11 Protocols
AU - Ullah, Hanif
AU - Abu-Tair, Mamun
AU - McClean, Sally
AU - Nixon, Paddy
AU - Parr, Gerard
AU - Luo, Chunbo
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank Ulster University for supporting this work through Vice Chancellor’s Research Scholarship (VCRS). The authors also would like to thank Invest NI and British Telecom (BT) for supporting this work through BT Ireland Innovation centre (BTIIC).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, The Author(s).
PY - 2020/12/1
Y1 - 2020/12/1
N2 - Cooperative aerial wireless networks composed of small unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs) are easy and fast to deploy and provide on the fly communication facilities in situations where part of the communication infrastructure is destroyed and the survivors need to be rescued on emergency basis. In this article, we worked on such a cooperative aerial UAV-based wireless network to connect the two participating stations. The proposed method provides on the fly communication facilities to connect the two ground stations through a wireless access point (AP) mounted on a UAV using the IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n. We conducted our experiments both indoor and outdoor to investigate the performance of IEEE 802.11 protocol stack including a/b/g/n. We envisioned two different cases: line of sight (LoS) and non-line of sight (NLoS). In LoS, we consider three different scenarios with respect to UAV altitude and performed the experiments at different altitudes to measure the performance and applicability of the proposed system in catastrophic situations and healthcare applications. Similarly, for NLoS, we performed a single set of experiments in an indoor environment. Based on our observations from the experiments, 802.11n at 2.4 GHz outperforms the other IEEE protocols in terms of data rate followed by 802.11n at 5 GHz band. We also concluded that 802.11n is the more suitable protocol that can be practiced in disastrous situations such as rescue operations and healthcare applications.
AB - Cooperative aerial wireless networks composed of small unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs) are easy and fast to deploy and provide on the fly communication facilities in situations where part of the communication infrastructure is destroyed and the survivors need to be rescued on emergency basis. In this article, we worked on such a cooperative aerial UAV-based wireless network to connect the two participating stations. The proposed method provides on the fly communication facilities to connect the two ground stations through a wireless access point (AP) mounted on a UAV using the IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n. We conducted our experiments both indoor and outdoor to investigate the performance of IEEE 802.11 protocol stack including a/b/g/n. We envisioned two different cases: line of sight (LoS) and non-line of sight (NLoS). In LoS, we consider three different scenarios with respect to UAV altitude and performed the experiments at different altitudes to measure the performance and applicability of the proposed system in catastrophic situations and healthcare applications. Similarly, for NLoS, we performed a single set of experiments in an indoor environment. Based on our observations from the experiments, 802.11n at 2.4 GHz outperforms the other IEEE protocols in terms of data rate followed by 802.11n at 5 GHz band. We also concluded that 802.11n is the more suitable protocol that can be practiced in disastrous situations such as rescue operations and healthcare applications.
KW - 2.4 and 5 GHz band
KW - Bridging communication
KW - Cooperative aerial wireless networks
KW - Disaster management
KW - Ground stations
KW - IEEE 802.11 standards
KW - UAV-based wireless network
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85087397522&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1186/s13638-020-01727-z
DO - 10.1186/s13638-020-01727-z
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85087397522
SN - 1687-1472
VL - 2020
SP - 1
EP - 20
JO - Eurasip Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking
JF - Eurasip Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking
IS - 1
M1 - 142
ER -