NSF-CAREER

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has grown in various commercial and civil applications, but their operations rely heavily on human control and communication. To improve their effectiveness in unstructured and unknown environments, there is a need to develop small, low-cost, and smart drones with higher autonomy. This NSF-CAREER project aims to create frameworks for fully autonomous multi-agent systems to operate in dynamic and unknown environments with minimal human intervention. This project also aims to develop novel techniques for decision-making, coordination, and task allocation in UAV systems, which can be translated to other multi-agent cognitive systems.

Alsamhi, Saeed Hamood and Almalki, Faris A. and Afghah, Fatemeh and Hawbani, Ammar and Shvetsov, Alexey V. and Lee, Brian and Song, Houbing "Drones? Edge Intelligence Over Smart Environments in B5G: Blockchain and Federated Learning Synergy" IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking , v.6 , 2022 https://doi.org/10.1109/TGCN.2021.3132561

Gharib, Mohammed and Afghah, Fatemeh and Serena Bentley, Elizabeth "LB-OPAR: Load balanced optimized predictive and adaptive routing for cooperative UAV networks" Ad hoc networks , v.132 , 2022 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adhoc.2022.102878

Namvar, Nima and Afghah, Fatemeh "Joint 3D Placement and Interference Management for Drone Small Cells" IEEE Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers ASILOMAR , 2021 https://doi.org/10.1109/IEEECONF53345.2021.9723350

Algharib, Mohammed and Afghah, Fatemeh "How UAVs? Highly Dynamic 3D Movement Improves Network Security?" 2021 IEEE 22nd International Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks (WoWMoM) , 2021 https://doi.org/10.1109/WoWMoM51794.2021.00022

Shamsoshoara, Alireza and Afghah, Fatemeh and Razi, Abolfazl and Zheng, Liming and Fulé, Peter Z. and Blasch, Erik "Aerial imagery pile burn detection using deep learning: The FLAME dataset" Computer Networks , v.193 , 2021 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2021.108001

Shamsoshoara, Alireza and Afghah, Fatemeh and Blasch, Erik and Ashdown, Jonathan and Bennis, Mehdi "UAV-Assisted Communication in Remote Disaster Areas Using Imitation Learning" IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society , v.2 , 2021 https://doi.org/10.1109/OJCOMS.2021.3067001

Keshavarz, Mahsa and Gharib, Mohammed and Afghah, Fatemeh and Ashdown, Jonathan D. "UASTrustChain: A Decentralized Blockchain- Based Trust Monitoring Framework for Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Systems" IEEE Access , v.8 , 2020 https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3044844

Do, Dinh-Thuan and Le, Chi-Bao and Afghah, Fatemeh "Enabling Full-Duplex and Energy Harvesting in Uplink and Downlink of Small-Cell Network Relying on Power Domain Based Multiple Access" IEEE Access , v.8 , 2020 https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3013912

Nguyen, Minh-Sang Van and Do, Dinh-Thuan and Afghah, Fatemeh and Islam, S. M. and Le, Anh-Tu "Exploiting Secrecy Performance of Uplink NOMA in Cellular Networks" IEEE Access , v.9 , 2021 https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3092830

Namvar, Nima and Afghah, Fatemeh "Heterogeneous Airborne mmWave Cells: Optimal Placement for Power-Efficient Maximum Coverage" IEEE INFOCOM Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain-Enabled Secure and Privacy-Preserving Air and Ground Smart Vehicular Networks (AIBESVN) , 2022 https://doi.org/10.1109/INFOCOMWKSHPS54753.2022.9798023

Gharib, Mohammed and Nandadapu, Shashidhar and Afghah, Fatemeh "An Exhaustive Study of Using Commercial LTE Network for UAV Communication in Rural Areas" 2021 IEEE International Conference on Communications Workshops (ICC Workshops) , 2021 https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCWorkshops50388.2021.9473547

NSF-CAREER is funded by the National Science Foundation Award #2034218.