International Workshop on Wireless Networking for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (WNUAV) 2010

The availability of low-cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), such as unmanned quadrocopters and blimps, opens up the prospects of an entirely new class of Low Altitude Wireless Network Platforms, which are hosted at altitudes of up to a few hundred meters. These aerial networks allow on one hand new sensor applications like 3D-air-quality-measurements and on the other new navigational strategies that are based on inter-robot communication like swarming. The corresponding wireless network needs to provide highly reliable and low delay control links and data links for administering and managing UAVs and user/sensor/mission data respectively. At the same time, UAVs offer the capability to provide ad-hoc wireless networks, for example to facilitate temporary hot spots in case of public events and emergencies. In addition, UAV-based networks may be flexibly deployed to compensate network outages.