Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in Future Communication System

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is increasingly becoming a promising tool in communication system. On one hand, UAV has been used as an aerial communication platform to provide wireless communications. On the other hand, UAV has been employed as an aerial user equipment to perform arbitrary missions. Both of these applications are promising in terms of cost, flexibility, and automation. Nevertheless, existing works usually consider these applications separately. This limits the role of UAV in future communication system. Thus, in this paper, we relax this limitation and further visualize what UAV might provide us in the future. Specifically, we present a vision of UAV in future communication system along with new applications and capabilities. This vision provides a blueprint on how engineers can design the future communication system with UAVs playing prominent roles. We then review the current advances of UAV communications to understand the gap between vision and reality. Lastly, we outline the critical issues, challenges, and future directions toward this vision.