Ultraviolet-Based UAV Swarm Communications: Potentials and Challenges

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm communication has received increasing attention thanks to its intriguing advantages, such as low costs, high mobility, and deployment convenience. However, this technology is also facing certain new challenges, for example, RF spectrum scarcity, interference, and network connectivity. To this end, ultraviolet (UV) communication is introduced in this article to tackle these problems due to its distinctive benefits, such as license-free operation, immunity to electromagnetic interference, and the ability of non-line-of-sight transmission. First, a comparison between UV communication and other alternatives is presented. Then the structural designs of the high-capability UAV and the low-capability UAV, the system communication protocol and mutual interference, and the network topology of the UV-based UAV swarm are investigated. Further, the bit error rate performance, data rate, and communication range are analyzed. In the end, an artificial-intelligence-aided UV-based UAV swarm system is put forward to tackle users' complicated requirements. Simultaneously, the challenges are discussed to direct future research work.