THz-enabled UAV communications: Motivations, results, applications, challenges, and future considerations

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and Terahertz (THz) communication are promising technologies envisioned to support the race towards enhanced performance with respect to data rate, reliability, coverage, etc. Research on the merger of these two technologies for meeting the different application requirements in future wireless communication is gaining momentum, which could facilitate its deployment for applications envisioned for the sixth-generation wireless systems and beyond. Enabling UAV communication in the THz band is quite challenging owing to the highly mobile nature of UAVs and the strict line-of-sight requirements of communication in the high frequency bands. Nevertheless, very recent research in terms of experimentation and modelling has shown the merits of THz-enabled UAV communication in several critical and peculiar cases which reveals its great potential. Thus, this paper presents a survey of the literature on the experimental results, numerous potential use cases and the corresponding research challenges of THz-UAV with a view to providing insights into the myriad of opportunities in this domain of aerial wireless communications.

Review article

Oluwatosin Ahmed Amodu
Chedia Jarray
Sherif Adeshina Busari
Mohamed Othman

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and Terahertz (THz) communication are promising technologies envisioned to support the race towards enhanced performance with respect to data rate, reliability, coverage, etc. Research on the merger of these two technologies for meeting the different application requirements in future wireless communication is gaining momentum, which could facilitate its deployment for applications envisioned for the sixth-generation wireless systems and beyond. Enabling UAV communication in the THz band is quite challenging owing to the highly mobile nature of UAVs and the strict line-of-sight requirements of communication in the high frequency bands. Nevertheless, very recent research in terms of experimentation and modelling has shown the merits of THz-enabled UAV communication in several critical and peculiar cases which reveals its great potential. Thus, this paper presents a survey of the literature on the experimental results, numerous potential use cases and the corresponding research challenges of THz-UAV with a view to providing insights into the myriad of opportunities in this domain of aerial wireless communications.

Publication date
2023-03
Journal / proceedings
Ad Hoc Networks
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Volume
140
Pages
103073
Article number
103073
DOI
10.1016/j.adhoc.2022.103073

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Citation

Oluwatosin Ahmed Amodu; Chedia Jarray; Sherif Adeshina Busari; Mohamed Othman. 2023-03. THz-enabled UAV communications: Motivations, results, applications, challenges, and future considerations. Ad Hoc Networks. 103073. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adhoc.2022.103073

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1570-8705

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