A Survey on Network Architectures and Applications for Nanosat and UAV Swarms

Abstract

Nanosatellites and unmanned aerial vehicles are attracting more and more the interest of both industrial and research fields. They are low-cost and easy deployable items, therefore their use is expected to quickly grow in the next few years. This work proposes a survey on the network architectures and the applications for nanosatellite swarms and constellations, as well as for flying ad hoc networks, by characterizing distinctive features and issues yet to be resolved in order to take advantage from both technologies in a joint fashion.