Special issue of IET “Smart Cities” devoted to drones for smart cities

Francisco J. Martinez from University of Zaragoza, Teruel, Spain, Chaker Abdelaziz Kerrache, from Université Amar Telidji de Laghouat, Laghouat, Algeria and Abderrahmane Lakas from UAE University, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates are the editors of the special issue of IET “Smart Cities” on Drones for smart cities, November 2022.

Smart cities and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are two relatively recent concepts and also hot topics in research. The combination of these two technologies is expected to propel their capabilities even further for enabling revolutionary applications that will improve our quality of life. The Special Issue focuses on novel work done on the application of UAVs where state‐of‐the‐art technologies in sensing, information dissemination, communications, and artificial intelligence are applied within the context of smart cities.

The Special Issue aims to investigate open issues related to ‘Drones for Smart Cities’ and collected three high‐quality papers that were accepted after a rigorous review process. 
A review of some of the technical difficulties with aerial coordination and interaction that multirotor UAVs still encounter is presented by Fabra et al. [1].

The study of Popescu et al. [2] examines the potential hovering locations based on each hovering location's unique constraints, such as flight time and coverage, in order to increase connection and ensure data rates in the 5G network.

Finally, Rathee et al. [3] developed a trustworthy drone-based communication system for smart cities, in which intelligent devices conduct surveillance using drones. By classifying each device into legitimate and malicious ones, behavior based and local trust models are utilised to examine how each one communicates. 

We remind that one of the topics covered in the SMACITE curriculum is devoted to drone technology and applications in Smart Cities.

We can’t wait to meet you there!

REFERENCES
1. Fabra, F., et al.: Collision‐free cooperative UAV protocols for sustainable aerial services. IET Smart Cities (2022). https://doi.org/10.1049/smc2.12028 
2. Popescu, D., Jacquet, P., Mans, B.: Connecting flying backhauls of UAVS to enhance vehicular networks with fixed 5g nr infrastructure. IET Smart Cities (2022). https://doi.org/10.1049/smc2.12034  
3. Rathee, G., et al.: A trust‐based mechanism for drones in smart cities. IET Smart Cities (2022). https://doi.org/10.1049/smc2.12039