UAV-Assisted IoT Solutions

Dear Colleagues,

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are emerging as a promising technology for enabling various Internet of Things (IoT) applications, such as smart cities, environmental monitoring, disaster management, and public safety. UAVs can provide flexible and dynamic connectivity, data collection, and computation for IoT devices and networks, overcoming the limitations of terrestrial infrastructure. However, UAV-assisted IoT solutions also pose significant challenges, such as flight planning, energy efficiency, security, and scalability. This Special Issue aims to present the latest research advances and innovations in UAV-assisted IoT solutions, covering topics such as:

• Integration of UAVs with existing IoT infrastructure;
• Novel protocols and technologies for the communication between UAVs and IoT devices;
• Flight planning and control algorithms for UAVs to optimize IoT data collection;
• Edge computing and artificial intelligence techniques for UAVs to enable low-latency and high-quality data processing and decision making;
• Security and privacy mechanisms for UAV-assisted IoT systems to protect data and communication from malicious attacks;
• Applications and case studies of UAV-assisted IoT solutions in various domains, including smart cities, agriculture, healthcare, and transportation.

The Special Issue welcomes original and high-quality research papers that address the aforementioned topics or other related aspects of UAV-assisted IoT solutions. Submitted papers should present novel theoretical or experimental results or provide comprehensive surveys or state-of-the-art reviews. We also welcome papers that demonstrate the practical relevance and impact of the proposed solutions on real-world scenarios.

Prof. Dr. Carlos Tavares Calafate
Prof. Dr. Abderrahmane Lakas
Dr. João Pedro Matos-Carvalho
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Drones is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• IoT
• smart cities
• flight planning
• edge computing
• AI