BTH researcher honoured with the Women in Engineering Best Paper Award

Dr Thi My Chinh Chu, senior lecturer at the Department of Computer Science, has been honoured with the Women in Engineering Best Paper Award at the 20th IEEE International Symposium on Antenna Technology and Applied Electromagnetics that was held in St. John’s, Canada.

Flying ad hoc networks (FANETs) comprising unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have received increased attention as a promising technology for beyond fifth-generation mobile systems. This type of FANET benefits from the high mobility and low deployment costs of UAVs in scenarios where terrestrial infrastructure is largely destroyed. Given the increasing number of natural disasters observed in recent years, including flooding, earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones, and forest fires, UAV-based FANETs may quickly establish reliable communication to reduce post-disaster consequences.

In this paper*, the deployment of FANETs focuses on disaster scenarios where UAVs operate with different transmit powers, depending on the number of user equipment within their coverage range or the intended mission duration. The clustering of suitable subsets of UEs around the different UAVs is performed using a weighted K-means algorithm that considers the varying transmit powers at the UAVs.

This work is part of the research project “Reliable Flying Ad Hoc Networks for Civil-Military Mission Critical Applications” funded by VINNOVA under the civil-military synergies program and is conducted in collaboration with Saab AB in Karlskrona, Gothenburg, and Linköping. Dr Thi My Chinh Chu is leading a work package in this project focusing on user clustering, computing, and performance assessment for different deployment scenarios of civil-military mission-critical applications.

* On Weighted K-Means User Clustering for Flying Ad Hoc Networks in Disaster Scenarios, by Thi My Chinh Chu, Hans-Jürgen Zepernick, and Alexander Westerhagen.

Contact: Thi My Chinh Chu thi.my.chinh.chu@bth.se