Aerial Monitoring with Drones: Experimental Insights on Communication Challenges

Abstract:
A system of unmanned aerial and ground vehicles is implemented and evaluated for autonomous monitoring of freight containers at a container terminal. Reliable operation of this system requires stable, high-throughput, and low-latency communications and networking. We present experimental results and insights from using multiple drones connected via 5G and Wi-Fi mesh to fulfill their monitoring mission and acting as relays to enhance the connectivity and latency of ground vehicles. The used technologies fulfill most requirements but have limited scalability.