Smart Wireless Communication Networks

Dr. Ran Zhang, Assistant Professor of ECE, is developing new UAV communication networks with a dynamic UAV lineup.  His multi-drone prototyping project has been extended to three autonomous drones which can decide its movement via onboard intelligence and inter-communicate via onboard WiFi. The goal is to develop an autonomous multi-drone platform free of human intervention or centralized control for various group-based tasks such as coordinated target search, maximum ground dot coverage, and bird flock imitation. Dr. Zhang’s research is supported by an NSF ERI grant entitled “ERI: Distributed Learning in Regulation of UAV Communication Networks with Dynamic UAV Lineup” which focuses onFor further details on the research areas and lab activities click here.