NETCOM Research Group

DRONEXT will address the use of small UAVs (micro-UAVs) to provide communication and service coverage in delimited geographical areas in which there is no appropriate communication infrastructure for the target application, either as this is non-existent, or due to its absence of availability, for example because of a natural disaster. The project will exploit the potential of UAV platforms existing in the marketplace to define and develop a new architecture for next-generation UAVs, which will allow evolving a conventional UAV into an advanced communications device, referred to as ‘dronext’ in the scope of this project. This dronext will support the algorithms for cooperative flight, the energy-saving mechanisms and the communication protocols that are needed to build an adaptive communication infrastructure, with support for resilience and the ability to effectively provide communication support in the set of applications envisioned for secure societies. Finally, the platform of DRONEXT equipment developed within this project will be evaluated in real flight campaigns on segregated airspaces.