Weekly Seminar: “Wireless Communications with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)”

ABSTRACT:

Introduction / Objective
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or the so-called drones are increasingly used in many applications. UAVs can be used as complementary infrastructure to provide wireless services for the ground users or they may require wireless connectivity from the ground for a safe and reliable operation. In this talk, four emerging scenarios are considered: UAV acting as aerial base station to serve ground users, UAV acting as aerial anchor to localize ground devices, UAV acting as aerial cellular user, and finally cellular UAV-to-UAV communication. Through these scenarios we address several of important concerns in UAVs wireless communication and networking including: ground-UAV channel characteristics, design degrees of freedom, unique constraints in UAVs networking, user and network level performance, optimal deployments of UAVs and important design guidelines.
Research Methodology
To address the above-mentioned concerns we have developed scenario-based analytical frameworks which are mainly based on stochastic geometry (SG) approach. As the altitude of UAV plays a prominent role, the existing 2D SG models are extended to 3D by incorporating important system details. Our analytical modeling and results are then verified by Monte-Carlo simulations. We also proposed a generic altitude-dependent channel model which enabled us to study the performance of UAVs under cooperative scheme.

SPEAKER:

M. Mahdi Azari obtained his BSc and MSc degrees in electrical and communication systems engineering from the university of Tehran (Iran). After several years of industrial experience in the field of telecommunication systems, he joined KU Leuven (Belgium) first as a PhD research assistant and then, after completing the PhD degree, as a research associate. During his academic career, he also visited the university of Pompeu Fabra (UPF) in Barcelona, Spain. He is currently a researcher at the communication system division in CTTC. He has (co-)authored various scientific articles, a tutorial paper, and an invited book chapter on communication systems, all in recognized venues, and has been delivering talks targeting academia and the industry. For his work on “Cellular UAV-to-UAV Communications”, he received the Best Paper Award at IEEE PIMRC’19. He is a silver medalist of Iran’s National Mathematical Olympiad and received the Iran’s National Elites Foundation Award. His research interests mainly include communication theory, signal processing, and wireless systems modeling and analysis. Particularly he is interested in cellular networks, UAV communications, and Internet of Things (IoT).

Publications list:  https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=HcLvC8AAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

This talk is open to whoever interested from the research community