However, this surge introduces significant challenges in communication and control of large numbers of drones, especially at long ranges and high altitudes. Moreover, supervising low-altitude drones with traditional radar systems is becoming increasingly challenging. Serious privacy and security threats also arise, as drones can be misused for illegitimate activities such as breaching no-fly zones, spying on private locations, launching cyber-attacks, or conducting terrorist and targeted attacks on critical infrastructure.
Our research focuses on the following three directions:
Communicating with Drones
Massive MIMO technology offers reliable communication with drones both in short and long ranges. Millimeter Wave Massive MIMO has already been used to achieve high throughput for sports streaming via drone swarms. In applications like disaster management and rescue operations, massive MIMO-aided drones can potentially cover a larger area. However, many challenges remain: accurate drone trajectory mapping, estimation of drone-to-base station channels, and handling the effects of mobility.
Jamming Unfriendly Drones
In recent years, hostile forces have used massive numbers of drones for covert operations, such as aerial imaging of security-sensitive areas, and for military attacks. It is reported that in Ukraine in 2024 alone, hundreds of thousands of drones were deployed. Because of their large numbers and small size, drones in a swarm are difficult to efficiently detect, localize, and destroy. One option is to jam the radiofrequency channels that the drones use to communicate and navigate. This requires cost-effective signal-processing techniques. Massive MIMO base stations, in both bi- and mono-static settings, can be utilized to estimate the drone to base-station channels, map their trajectories, and beamform jamming signals towards them.
Using 5G Infrastructure to Detect Drones
Early warning systems have become increasingly essential to ensure the safety of people, assets, and infrastructure. To address these challenges, 5G radio signals can be effectively utilized to detect the presence or proximity of intruding UAVs in restricted areas. Additionally, the emerging concept of integrated sensing and communication is driving mobile networks toward perceptive mobile networks. This evolution involves investing in the integration of sensing capabilities into current cellular networks to support such applications.
Projects
ALERT: eArLy warning systEms for dRone detection based on disTributed integrated sensing and communication, funded by WASP.
Related publications
- Jopanya, Palatip, and D. P. M. Osorio. "Utilizing 5G NR SSB Blocks for Passive Detection and Localization of Low-Altitude Drones." arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.02641 (2025).
- X. A. F. Cabezas and D. P. M. Osorio, "Strategic Deployment of Swarm of UAVs for Secure IoT Networks," in IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, vol. 60, no. 5, pp. 6517-6530, Oct. 2024.
- X. A. F. Cabezas, D. P. M. Osorio and M. Juntti, "Efficient Framework for UAV-Based Distributed Sensing," 2024 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 2024.
- Chandhar, Prabhu, Danyo Danev, and Erik G. Larsson, "Massive MIMO for communications with drone swarms," IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 2017.
