Drones link scattered devices to create IoT networks

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Drones could be key to connecting large numbers of devices scattered in the environment to create IoT networks.

This is the view of researchers at KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia) who have demonstrated that drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), can fly efficiently between clusters of IoT objects to collect data.

“IoT networks will revolutionise the way we monitor, control and communicate with everything around us,” said Osama Bushnaq, a Ph.D. student in Tareq Al Naffouri’s lab. Crop fields could be filled with sensors that monitor water and nutrient levels. The research is detailed in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

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“To enable IoT networks, a huge number of low-cost, self-powered sensors are needed,” Bushnaq said in a statement. Traditional wireless data transfer is unsuitable for this purpose due to the limited power supply of each sensor and the complexity of connecting so many devices.

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