This survey studies the potential data link candidates for unmanned aircraft vehicles (UAVs). There has been tremendous growth in different applications of UAVs such as lifesaving and rescue missions, commercial use, recreations, etc. Unlike the traditional wireless communications, the data links for these systems do not have any general standardized framework yet to ensure safe co-existence of UAVs with other flying vehicles. This motivated us to provide a comprehensive survey of potential data link technologies available for UAVs. Our goal is to study the current trends and available candidates and carry out a comprehensive comparison among them. The contribution of this survey is to highlight the strength and weakness of the current data link options and their suitability to satisfy the UAVs communication requirements. Satellite links, cellular technologies, Wi-Fi and several similar wireless technologies are studied thoroughly in this paper. We also focus on several available promising standards that can be modified for these data links. Then, we discuss standard-related organizations that are working actively in the area of civilian unmanned systems. Finally, we bring up some future challenges in this area with several potential solutions to motivate further research work.

中文翻译：

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民用无人机系统的潜在数据链候选者：一项调查

这项调查研究了无人驾驶飞机 (UAV) 的潜在数据链候选者。无人机在救生救援任务、商业用途、娱乐等不同应用领域都有了巨大的增长。 与传统的无线通信不同，这些系统的数据链路还没有任何通用的标准化框架来确保安全共存无人机与其他飞行器。这促使我们对无人机可用的潜在数据链技术进行全面调查。我们的目标是研究当前的趋势和可用的候选人，并在它们之间进行全面比较。本次调查的贡献是突出当前数据链选项的优缺点及其满足无人机通信要求的适用性。卫星链接，本文深入研究了蜂窝技术、Wi-Fi 和几种类似的无线技术。我们还关注几个可用的有前途的标准，这些标准可以针对这些数据链接进行修改。然后，我们讨论在民用无人系统领域积极工作的标准相关组织。最后，我们提出了该领域未来的一些挑战，并提出了一些潜在的解决方案，以激发进一步的研究工作。