Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) need effective and efficient communication systems, especially when they’re working within the disaster management sector.

A collaboration between Duy Tan University (DTU) and Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) researchers have may headway enhancing UAV comm lines, so much so that they’ve been awarded the Newton Prize 2017. The accolade brings £200,000 by the U.K. government for developing the new UAV communication system that can withstand the harshest of conditions.

Together the team created a real-time optimal resource allocation algorithm “for maximizing the energy efficiency by jointly optimizing the energy-harvesting time and power control for the considered (D2D) communication embedded with UAV,” according to the researchers.

Traditional systems still employ time-consuming and costly optimization methods. The new system, however, decreases the running time down to milliseconds. Since their algorithm is embedded within the UAV, the devices can provide vital assistance in areas where there are congested or compromised networks, infrastructure damage, or power supply limitations.

“In natural disasters, keeping communication connectivity provides a lifeline,” says researcher Trung Duong via TechXplore. “The lack of communications in remote areas and poor conditions for communications in developing countries can have detrimental effects. We believe that our research for real-time optimization in UAV communications is the first attempt in the field to tackle time constraint of UAV, which will play a crucial role in disaster scenarios.”

Next, the researchers will try incorporating a number of technologies into the project, such as machine learning.

The study, “Real-time Optimal Resource Allocation for Embedded UAV Communication Systems,” was published in IEEE Wireless Communications Letters. A pre-published version is available on arXiv.