06 June 2023
Paper accepted for Elsevier Computer Communications
Our article Opportunistic Airborne Virtual Network Infrastructure for Urban Wireless Networks has been accepted for publication in Elsevier Computer Communications.
In it, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are investigated as opportunistic airborne network infrastructure for urban wireless networks, providing relaying for cooperative awareness applications and coordinating channel access for platooning without impacting their primary missions. Our results demonstrate that opportunistic UAV relaying yields performance benefits comparable to optimally deployed UAVs, while opportunistic channel access reduces packet collisions by around 86% compared to scenarios without UAVs. Increasing the number of UAVs can partially recover the impact of suboptimal missions.