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There are significant milestones in modern human's civilization in which mankind stepped into a different level of life with a new spectrum of possibilities and comfort. From fire-lighting technology and wheeled wagons to writing, electricity and the Internet, each one changed our lives dramatically. In this paper, we take a deep look into the invasive Brain Machine Interface (BMI), an ambitious and cutting-edge technology which has the potential to be another important milestone in human civilization. Not only beneficial for patients with severe medical conditions, the invasive BMI technology can significantly impact different technologies and almost every aspect of human's life. We review the biological and engineering concepts that underpin the implementation of BMI applications. There are various essential techniques that are necessary for making invasive BMI applications a reality. We review these through providing an analysis of (i) possible applications of invasive BMI technology, (ii) the methods and devices for detecting and decoding brain signals, as well as (iii) possible options for stimulating signals into human's brain. Finally, we discuss the challenges and opportunities of invasive BMI for further development in the area., Comment: We have made significant changes to this article

Next-generation wireless networks will deploy UAVs dynamically as aerial base stations (UAV-BSs) to boost the wireless network coverage in the out of reach areas. To provide an efficient service in stochastic environments, the optimal number of UAV-BSs, their locations, and trajectories must be specified appropriately for different scenarios. Such deployment requires an intelligent decision-making mechanism that can deal with various variables at different times. This paper proposes a multi UAV-BS deployment model for smart farming, formulated as a Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) method to find the optimal number of UAV-BSs to monitor animals' behavior. This model considers the effect of UAV-BSs' signal interference and path loss changes caused by users' mobility to maximize the system's efficiency. To avoid collision among UAV-BSs, we split the considered area into several clusters, each covered by a UAV-BS. Our simulation results suggest up to 11x higher deployment efficiency than the benchmark clustering algorithm.

Next-generation mobile networks have proposed the integration of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as aerial base stations (UAV-BS) to serve ground nodes. Despite having advantages of using UAV-BSs, their dependence on the on-board, limited-capacity battery hinders their service continuity. Shorter trajectories can save flying energy, however, UAV-BSs must also serve nodes based on their service priority since nodes' service requirements are not always the same. In this paper, we present an energy-efficient trajectory optimization for a UAV assisted IoT system in which the UAV-BS considers the IoT nodes' service priorities in making its movement decisions. We solve the trajectory optimization problem using Double Q-Learning algorithm. Simulation results reveal that the Q-Learning based optimized trajectory outperforms a benchmark algorithm, namely Greedily-served algorithm, in terms of reducing the average energy consumption of the UAV-BS as well as the service delay for high priority nodes.

Despite the increasing popularity of commercial usage of UAVs or drone-delivered services, their dependence on the limited-capacity on-board batteries hinders their flight-time and mission continuity. As such, developing in-situ power transfer solutions for topping-up UAV batteries have the potential to extend their mission duration. In this paper, we study a scenario where UAVs are deployed as base stations (UAV-BS) providing wireless Hotspot services to the ground nodes, while harvesting wireless energy from flying energy sources. These energy sources are specialized UAVs (Charger or transmitter UAVs, tUAVs), equipped with wireless power transmitting devices such as RF antennae. tUAVs have the flexibility to adjust their flight path to maximize energy transfer. With the increasing number of UAV-BSs and environmental complexity, it is necessary to develop an intelligent trajectory selection procedure for tUAVs so as to optimize the energy transfer gain. In this paper, we model the trajectory optimization of tUAVs as a Markov Decision Process (MDP) problem and solve it using Q-Learning algorithm. Simulation results confirm that the Q-Learning based optimized trajectory of the tUAVs outperforms two benchmark strategies, namely random path planning and static hovering of the tUAVs.

This paper presents a new method for recharging flying base stations, carried by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), using wireless power transfer from dedicated, airborne, Radio Frequency (RF) energy sources. In particular, we study a system in which UAVs receive wireless power without being disrupted from their regular trajectory. The optimal placement of the energy sources are studied so as to maximize received power from the energy sources by the receiver UAVs flying with a linear trajectory over a square area. We find that for our studied scenario of two UAVs, if an even number of energy sources are used, placing them in the optimal locations maximizes the total received power, while achieving fairness among the UAVs. However, in the case of using an odd number of energy sources, we can either maximize the total received power, or achieve fairness, but not both at the same time. Numerical results show that placing the energy sources at the suggested optimal locations results in significant power gain compared to nonoptimal placements., Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, conference paper