Communication Technologies Enabling Effective UAV Networks: A Standards Perspective

Recent developments in the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) field have made evident the need for a standardization process of the communication technologies supporting direct information exchange, thus enabling UAV-to-UAV networking. We consider this is necessary to achieve all sorts of cooperative tasks requiring real-time (or near-real-time) synchronization, including swarm formation and collision avoidance. In this article, we therefore argue in favor of introducing a new standard that would address this specific area, highlighting why current technologies are not adequate, what the different steps toward rapid standardization are, and which lessons have been learned from related fields, namely the vehicular and robotic environments, in the past few years.