Networking of Internet of UAVs: Challenges and Intelligent Approaches

Internet of unmanned aerial vehicle (I-UAV) networks promise to accomplish sensing and transmission tasks quickly, robustly, and cost-efficiently via effective cooperation among UAVs. To achieve the promising benefits, the crucial I-UAV networking issue should be tackled. This article argues that I-UAV networking can be classified into three categories, quality-of-service (QoS) driven networking, quality-of-experience (QoE) driven networking, and situation aware networking. Each category of networking poses emerging challenges which have severe effects on the safe and efficient accomplishment of I-UAV missions. This article elaborately analyzes these challenges and expounds on the corresponding intelligent approaches to tackle the I-UAV networking issue. Besides, considering the uplifting effect of extending the scalability of I-UAV networks through cooperating with high altitude platforms (HAPs), this article gives an overview of the integrated HAP and I-UAV networks and presents the corresponding networking challenges and intelligent approaches.