Multi-service Cloud of Drones for Multi-purpose Applications

This paper proposes the concept of a multi-service cloud of drones that provides services required by people in crowded open air places, such as Internet connectivity or access to emergency services. The cloud of drones has the benefit of resource replication and tackling scalability. At the same time, their number and operation can be controlled by the cloud to enhance reliability and provide greater performance. This paper presents an initial design of a model called a cloud of drones that aims to serve users in emergencies, as well as routing requests between drones. Some significant aspects related to the use of drones, such as battery usage and the flying management of drones, are discussed in the paper. The first of a set of services proposed in the paper was tested and evaluated. The experimental results indicated that accessing the Internet through a Raspberry Pi that is attached to a flying drone is possible and will not impact the user experience in terms of delay and battery usage. Furthermore, the results show that accessing the Internet through a drone can not only be similar to using a mobile device cellular network, but also costs less in terms of time and power.