Conference Paper

As Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) become more
widespread and accessible, their rapid deployment and flexibility make them valuable assets in Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR) operations. However, when operated individually, UAVs are limited by their coverage range of action and are constrained to ground-based infrastructures. To mitigate these issues, this work proposes a fleet of UAVs designed to assist rescue teams in such catastrophe scenarios. The proposed approach considers a mesh of UAVs, building a mobile 5G Base Station (BS) backhauled by mobile Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN). The UAVs, equipped with video and depth cameras, gather footage and distance metrics to capture live real-time feed of the scenes, and allow autonomous detection and tracking to follow relevant targets. To ensure seamless connectivity, a Wi-Fi mesh network connects the UAVs with dynamic routing
to enable communication between nodes, as well as adapt the network to changes in topology. The proposed platform is tested in real scenarios, with an operational UAV mesh that supports the communication and mission requirements. The results show a successful connection to the Internet by the users in the ground, along with low latency of video streaming and object detection.