Design of an UAV Equipped With SDR Acting as a GSM Base Station

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are popular in many fields of application because of their flexibility and a rather low price. UAVs are a cheap solution for surveillance and detection of people after hazardous events. In this paper, we deal with the ability of UAVs to be used not only as a detection, but also as a communication tool for establishing communication between a person in need of rescue and a rescuing team. The proposed solution should be capable of visual detection using standard and thermal video cameras, allowing detection in low-visibility environments and situations. Besides visual detection, we decided to investigate the possibilities to implement a solution which allows us to establish communication with the person in need of rescue using mobile network without the available infrastructure. The proposed system should provide georeferenced video in visible and thermal spectrum to pinpoint the place of interest for the rescuing team and allow communication through an ad-hoc GSM network using UAV as a base station.