Sharif Digital Repository

Although Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are capable of significantly improving the information security by detecting the eavesdropper's location, their limited energy motivates our research to propose a secure and energy efficient scheme. Thanks to the common-message philosophy introduced by Rate-Splitting (RS), we no longer have to allocate a portion of the transmit power to radiate Artificial Noise (AN), and yet both the Energy Efficiency (EE) and secrecy can be improved. Hence we define and study the Secrecy Energy Efficiency (SEE) of a multi-carrier multi-UAV network, in which Cooperative Rate-Splitting (CRS) is employed by each multi-antenna UAV Base-Station (UAV-BS) for protecting... 

The combination of pursuit and line of sight guidance laws, called PLOS, is used to steer an unmanned aerial vehicle along a desired path. In the previous studies, the parameters of this guidance law are tuned by trial and error and are constant, during the flight. In this research, it will be shown that the optimal value of these parameters depends on the initial conditions of the problem and the wind conditions. For this reason, a fuzzy system is proposed to generate the instantaneous optimal value of these parameters, in such a way that the flying vehicle converges to the desired path in less time and follows it more accurately, in the presence of wind. For this purpose, a cost function... 

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are developing rapidly owing to flexible deployment and access services as the air base stations. In this paper, by taking the realistic assumption of imperfect channel state information at transmitter (CSIT), we investigate the robust and secure design of downlink UAV network while considering the worst-case outage constraints due to communication link uncertainties. In our proposed heterogeneous network, comprised of both UAV-cells and macro-users, rate splitting technique is deployed by UAV base-station (UAV-BS) to enhance the system performance in terms of security, power saving, and robustness against imperfect CSIT. Through our proposed design, we... 

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have found compelling applications in intelligent logistics, search and rescue as well as in air-borne Base Station (BS). However, their communications are prone to both channel errors and eavesdropping. Hence, we investigate the max-min secrecy fairness of UAV-aided cellular networks, in which Cooperative Rate-Splitting (CRS) aided downlink transmissions are employed by each multi-antenna UAV Base Station (UAV-BS) to safeguard the downlink of a two-user Multi-Input Single-Output (MISO) system against an external multi-antenna Eavesdropper ( Eve ). Realistically, only Imperfect Channel State Information (ICSI) is assumed to be available at the transmitter.... 

Single-task learning in artificial neural networks will be able to learn the model very well, and the benefits brought by transferring knowledge thus become limited. In this regard, when the number of tasks increases (e.g., semantic segmentation, panoptic segmentation, monocular depth estimation, and 3D point cloud), duplicate information may exist across tasks, and the improvement becomes less significant. Multi-task learning has emerged as a solution to knowledge-transfer issues and is an approach to scene understanding which involves multiple related tasks each with potentially limited training data. Multi-task learning improves generalization by leveraging the domain-specific information... 

In recent years, unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) are frequently used in many different applications of photogrammetry such as building damage monitoring, archaeological mapping and vegetation monitoring. In this paper, a new vertical take-off and landing fixed-wing UAS is proposed to robust photogrammetry missions, called SAMA-VTOL. In this study, the capability of SAMA-VTOL is investigated for generating orthophoto. The major stages are including designing, building and experimental scenario. First, a brief description of design and build is introduced. Next, an experiment was done to generate accurate orthophoto with minimum ground control points requirements. The processing step, which... 

In recent years, unmanned aerial systems have attracted great attention due to the electronic systems technology advancements. Among these vehicles, unmanned helicopters are more important because of their special abilities and superior performance. The complex nonlinear dynamic system (caused by main rotor flapping dynamics coupled with the rigid body rotational motion) and considerable effects of ambient disturbance make their utilization hard in actual missions. Attitude dynamics have the main role in helicopter stabilization, so implementing proper control system for attitude is an important issue for unmanned helicopter hovering and trajectory tracking performance. Besides this,... 

In this paper, a new three-dimensional path planning approach with obstacle avoidance for UAVs is proposed. The aim is to provide a computationally-fast on-board sub-optimal solution for collision-free path planning in static environments. The optimal 3D path is an NP (non-deterministic polynomial-time) hard problem which may be solved numerically by global optimization algorithms such as the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). Application of PSO to the 3D path planning class of problems faces typical challenges such slow convergence rate. It is shown that the performance may be improved markedly by implementing a novel parallel approach and incorporation of new termination conditions.... 

In this study, a new heuristic multiple model filter, called Multiple Model Extended Continuous Ant Colony Filter, is proposed to solve a nonlinear multiple model state estimation problem. In this filter, a bank of extended continuous ant colony filters are run in parallel to solve the multiple model estimation problem. The probability of each model is continually updated and consequently both the true model and the states of the nonlinear system are updated based on the weighted sum of the filters. The new multiple model filter is tested on an engineering problem. The problem is to estimate simultaneously the states of a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle as well as the wind model, applied... 

Fragile data hiding has been extensively used for secure transmission of the sensitive data using cover images, audios and videos. In the past decade, increasingly the remote sensing applications require transmission and archiving of large number of aerial images and videos. Storage and processing of remote sensing data in the public cloud computing and storage platforms, with servers outside the control of the data owners, requires sufficient attention to persevering the privacy of the data. Furthermore, in the past few years the applications of drones and unmanned aerial vehicles demand algorithms designed especially for low altitude remote sensing data. In this paper, a novel fragile data... 

Quadrotors have become very popular, both commercially and as research platforms. Numerous studies have been carried out on these aerial vehicles, covering different aspects of their dynamics and control. Many of the interesting applications of quadrotors arise when they are used as part of a cooperative robotic system, consisting of aerial and ground robots. Two essential steps toward realizing autonomous teams of aerial and ground robots are achieving position coordination between them, and autonomous landing of aerial robots on ground platforms. The goal of this paper is to tackle the problems of tracking and landing of an aerial robot on a mobile platform. Two approaches are presented... 

A cooperative task allocation and search algorithm is proposed to find and localize a group of ground-based moving targets using a group of Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) working in a decentralized manner. It is assumed that targets have RF emissions. By using an algorithm including Global Search (GS), Approach Target (AT), Locate Target (LT), and Target Reacquisition (TR) modes, UAVs cooperatively search the entire parts of a desired area, approach to the detected targets, locate the targets, and search again to find the targets that stop transmitting their RF emissions during the localization process, respectively. In the GS mode, UAVs utilize a cost function to select the best zone for... 

A cooperative task allocation and search algorithm is proposed to find and localize a group of ground-based moving targets using a group of Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) working in a decentralized manner. It is assumed that targets have RF emissions. By using an algorithm including Global Search (GS), Approach Target (AT), Locate Target (LT), and Target Reacquisition (TR) modes, UAVs cooperatively search the entire parts of a desired area, approach to the detected targets, locate the targets, and search again to find the targets that stop transmitting their RF emissions during the localization process, respectively. In the GS mode, UAVs utilize a cost function to select the best zone for... 

Fragile data hiding has been extensively used for secure transmission of the sensitive data using cover images, audios and videos. In the past decade, increasingly the remote sensing applications require transmission and archiving of large number of aerial images and videos. Storage and processing of remote sensing data in the public cloud computing and storage platforms, with servers outside the control of the data owners, requires sufficient attention to persevering the privacy of the data. Furthermore, in the past few years the applications of drones and unmanned aerial vehicles demand algorithms designed especially for low altitude remote sensing data. In this paper, a novel fragile data... 

The use of Model Aided Inertial Navigation (MAIN) during the landing of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is investigated. A new MAIN algorithm is proposed, which is fast and accurate enough to be used in automatic landing. In this algorithm, the six Degree of Freedom (6DoF) model of the UAV is tightly coupled with the inertial navigation system; thus, the 6DoF model acts as an aiding system for the INS and vice versa. In the last parts of the landing phase in proximity of Earth, the proposed algorithm also estimates and removes the Ground Effect (GE) uncertainties and provides the height controller with a realistic model. An adaptive controller based on a parametric state-space model is used... 

Design of a vision-based target tracking control strategy for a dual-rotor UAV with tilting rotors is presented. In this research, the under-study UAV is equipped with a sliding mass that can slide over a motorized linear track attached to the UAV's fuselage enabling it to perform sophisticated maneuvers by monitoring its five controllable degrees of freedom. The dynamic model of the system is first derived and then a model-based controller using vision based pose estimation, obtained via an onboard down-looking camera, is designed enabling the UAV to: (1) pitch hover in position, (2) servo towards a target position, and (3) track a moving target. Simulations show the premise of the proposed... 

The flight of unmanned aerial vehicles is often associated with model uncertainties, measurement noises, and environmental disturbances such as wind gust. To mitigate these challenges, the accurate estimation of states is vital. Moreover, the wind model and its parameters should also be estimated and compensated during the flight. In this paper, a multiple model filter is implemented for this purpose. To investigate the performance of the multiple model filter, three different models including constant wind, '1-cosine' model and wind shear model are considered. The multiple model filter utilizes three extended Kalman filter to simultaneously estimate the model of wind, the parameters of the... 

In this paper, a new nonlinear robust adaptive impedance controller is addressed for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) equipped with a robot manipulator that physically interacts with environment. A UAV equipped with a robot manipulator is a novel system that can perform different tasks instead of human being in dangerous and/or inaccessible environments. The objective of the proposed robust adaptive controller is control of the UAV and its robotic manipulators end-effector impedance in Cartesian space in order to have a stable physical interaction with environment. The proposed controller is robust against parametric uncertainties in the nonlinear dynamics model of the UAV and the robot... 

This paper discusses the mission requirements and design constraints for an Unmanned Martian research aircraft based on a tailor-made classical airplane design methodology. First, the exploration mission is described using the information from previous real-world experiences and the desired payload is proposed accordingly. The environmental conditions that dictate severe constraints to the design space are characterized afterwards. The conventional airplane design cycle is modified to address the lack of statistical data and to define a proper design recycling criteria. Eventually, the outcome is presented in the form of a novel configuration that is well suited to carry out the specified... 

For the first time in this paper, Brain Emotional Learning Based Intelligent Controller (BELBIC) is applied to attitude control of a Quadrotor. BELBIC controller is designed based on the computational model of emotional learning process in mammalian brain limbic system. Proposed control algorithm is employed because of the learning ability and independency to system model and also satisfactory performances dealing with disturbances and changing in system parameters. Quadrotor is an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) which has the capability of Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL). Simulation results of controlling Quadrotor with BELBIC are addressed. Also pitch angle disturbance is applied due to...