Networking of Internet of UAVs: Challenges and Intelligent Approaches

Internet of unmanned aerial vehicle (I-UAV) networks promise to accomplish sensing and communication tasks quickly, robustly, safely, and cost-efficiently via effective situation awareness and cooperation among UAVs. To achieve the promising benefits, the crucial I-UAV networking issue should be tackled. This article argues that I-UAV networking can be classified into two categories: quality-of-service (QoS) driven networking and quality-of-experience (QoE) driven networking. Each category of networking poses emerging challenges that have severe effects on the safe and efficient accomplishment of I-UAV missions. This article elaborately analyzes these challenges and expounds on the corresponding intelligent approaches to tackle the I-UAV networking issue. Besides, considering the uplifting effect of extending the scalability of I-UAV networks through cooperating with high altitude platforms (HAPs), this article gives an overview of the integrated I-UAV and HAP network and presents the corresponding networking challenges and intelligent approaches.