Extend air–ground spectrum cartography to unknown time-varying environments and multi-vehicle cooperation

Extend the air–ground cooperative framework for active online spectrum cartography to unknown, time-varying environments and develop support for cooperation among multiple uncrewed aerial vehicles and uncrewed ground vehicles.

Background

The paper develops an air–ground cooperative framework in which a single uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) performs uncertainty-guided spectrum sensing and transmits quantized measurements to a mobile uncrewed ground vehicle (UGV). The UGV performs online spectrum-map reconstruction, guides subsequent sensing, and repositions itself to maintain communication under urban blockage.

The evaluated framework relies on a constructed dataset and a prescribed environment model, including fixed urban propagation fields, building layouts, channel conditions, and mobility settings. The authors explicitly identify adaptation to unknown and time-varying environments as future work, indicating that the present framework does not yet resolve how to operate when the radio environment changes over time or is not known in advance. They also leave unresolved the extension from one UAV–UGV pair to coordinated operation involving multiple UAVs and UGVs.