While drones have found use in military applications for decades, they have recently entered the commercial application arena, with substantial market investments coming up over the next decade. They are prevalent in application domains like public safety, surveillance, package/goods delivery, and first responders, to name a few. They are being seen as wireless services on the fly that can augment or complement the capabilities of the current terrestrial wireless communication networks. Drones require a radio frequency spectrum to connect and communicate with the ground base stations, irrespective of the underlying application. Terrestrial wireless networks can support low-altitude drone communications and can thereby help improve the reliability, security, and safety of drone operations. However, transmission from drones to terrestrial networks has the potential to interfere with a large number of terrestrial nodes because of their larger coverage footprint. This leads to a plethora of research challenges related to the coexistence of drone and terrestrial networks. Primarily, we need to understand the rules and regimes under which it makes sense for drone networks to share spectrum with terrestrial networks. Likewise, it is also essential to study situations in which it will be suitable for drones to operate over licensed frequency bands. Therefore, even though integrating drones with terrestrial networks is inevitable and will likely inspire a new suite of applications, many challenges must be tackled before this becomes a reality. For example, existing cellular networks were not designed or optimized to serve or support aerial devices, which demands a significant rethinking in the design and operation of these networks if we are to support these new aerial services reliably.

中文翻译：

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客座社论：无人机与地面网络的共存


虽然无人机在军事应用中的应用已有数十年，但最近它们才进入商业应用领域，未来十年将出现大量市场投资。它们广泛应用于公共安全、监控、包裹/货物递送和急救人员等应用领域。它们被视为动态无线服务，可以增强或补充当前地面无线通信网络的功能。无论底层应用如何，无人机都需要射频频谱来与地面基站连接和通信。地面无线网络可以支持低空无人机通信，从而有助于提高无人机操作的可靠性、安全性和安全性。然而，从无人机到地面网络的传输有可能干扰大量地面节点，因为它们的覆盖范围较大。这导致了与无人机和地面网络共存相关的大量研究挑战。首先，我们需要了解无人机网络与地面网络共享频谱的规则和制度。同样，研究适合无人机在许可频段上运行的情况也很重要。因此，尽管无人机与地面网络的集成是不可避免的，并且可能会激发一系列新的应用，但在这成为现实之前，还必须解决许多挑战。 例如，现有的蜂窝网络并未设计或优化来服务或支持空中设备，如果我们要可靠地支持这些新的空中服务，就需要对这些网络的设计和运营进行重大重新思考。