ARNET

Airborne Relaying Networks for Reliable and Secure Mobile Communications

	POCI-01-0145-FEDER-029074 PTDC/EEI-COM/29074/2017 3 years (Jul 2018 to Jul 2021)
Summary:	ARNET aims to design wireless communication protocols to enhance network reliability and security in Airborne Relaying NETworks (ARNET) for Long-Term Evolution (LTE) users on the ground. In particular, the UAV carries computation power, a lightweight LTE base station, and a onboard data processor. The UAVs are autonomously interconnected to each other and are building a multi-hop wireless network. Moreover, the UAVs are essentially mobile access points that provide network coverage and bring high data rates to challenging locations where cellular network layout may be underprovisioned. At a high level, the project will perform cutting-edge research across the following streams: i) Develop an understanding of the wireless characteristics of multi-hop communication links (UAV-to-UAV and UAVto-ground LTE users) with heterogeneous data, e.g., text, image, voice, and video. ii) Develop novel communication protocols for hierarchically organised cooperative UAVs to enhance airborne relaying network reliability with guaranteed network connectivity. iii) Develop practical and secure approaches for the airborne relaying network to evade targeted wireless communication attacks, e.g., jamming and spoofing. iv) Build an airborne relaying network testbed to operationally validate reliability and security with the proposed protocols. The final outcome will be a reliable and secure airborne relaying network, which enables real-time data relay for LTE users on the ground. The proposed protocols will be comprehensively evaluated on the testbed in a real-world environment. It will integrate advanced multi-hop wireless communication for relaying heterogeneous data of LTE users while ensuring service area coverage. Consequently, this project is a significant step towards realising the vision of an airborne relaying network.
Funding:	Global: 233KEUR, CISTER: 233KEUR
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Contact Person at CISTER:	Kai Li

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Journal Papers

Energy Efficient Legitimate Wireless Surveillance of UAV Communications CISTER-TR-190103
Kai Li, Razvan Christian Voicu, Salil S. Kanhere, Wei Ni, Eduardo Tovar

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IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology (TVT), IEEE. 4, Jan, 2019, Volume 68, Issue 3, pp 2283-2293.

Conference or Workshop Papers

Proactive Eavesdropping via Jamming for Trajectory Tracking of UAVs CISTER-TR-190404
Kai Li, Salil S. Kanhere, Wei Ni, Eduardo Tovar, Mohsen Guizani

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15th International Wireless Communications & Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC 2019). 24 to 28, Jun, 2019, Vehicular Communications Symposium, pp 477-482. Tangier, Morocco.

AdaptC: Programming Adaptation Policies for WSN Applications CISTER-TR-181132
Shashank Gaur, Luís Almeida, Eduardo Tovar

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34th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing (SAC 2019). 8 to 12, Apr, 2019, Cyber Physical Systems, pp 229-235. Limassol, Cyprus.

Technical Reports

On-board Deep Q-Network for UAV-assisted Online Power Transfer and Data Collection CISTER-TR-190601
Kai Li, Wei Ni, Eduardo Tovar

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2, Jun, 2019.