Dear Colleagues,

The efficient use of energy is critical for the successful deployment and operation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in a variety of applications, including communication networks, surveillance, and transportation. The increasing demand for UAVs in different industries such as agriculture, logistics, and emergency response has led to the development of more advanced and sophisticated UAVs. However, the limited on-board energy resources of UAVs pose a significant challenge for their long-term operation and endurance. Additionally, machine learning and AI can enable UAVs to make more informed and intelligent decisions regarding their operations, leading to more energy-efficient and sustainable UAV deployment. Furthermore, the integration of recent technologies like reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), satellites, etc. with UAVs empowers their application areas and future directions. In this Special Issue, we focus on recent developments and advances in energy-efficient models for UAV communications, including efficient UAV trajectory planning, energy-efficient UAV-NOMA and UAV-RIS systems, resource allocation, etc. The goal of this Special Issue is to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state-of-the-art in this field and to identify key areas for future research. The papers included in this Special Issue will cover a wide range of topics, including energy-efficient routing, energy-aware scheduling, and energy-efficient resource allocation. We believe that this Special Issue will be of interest to researchers, engineers, and practitioners working in the field of UAV communications and energy efficiency.

The papers included in this Special Issue will cover a wide range of topics, including but not limited to:

• Energy-aware AI models for UAV communications;
• Energy-efficient routing algorithms to optimize the trade-off between energy consumption and communication performance;
• Energy-efficient UAV-NOMA systems;
• Energy-efficient UAV-RIS communications;
• Energy-aware scheduling and task allocation methods that consider the energy constraints of UAVs and the requirements of communication systems;
• Energy-efficient resource allocation techniques that optimize the use of the radio-frequency spectrum and power allocation to reduce energy consumption;
• Battery management and charging methods for UAVs that extend the UAVs’ flight time;
• Studies on the energy consumption of different communication technologies such as cellular, satellite, and Wi-Fi, and how they can be applied to UAVs;
• Development of energy harvesting techniques for UAVs that can recharge the UAVs’ batteries during flight;
• Research on the environmental impact of UAVs in terms of energy consumption, and how to reduce their carbon footprint.

Dr. Sherief Hashima
Dr. Mostafa Fouda
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• energy aware
• Machine Learning
• UAV-NOMA
• UAV-RIS
• UAV-Assisted Communications
• B5G/6G