UAV assistance paradigm: State-of-the-art in applications and challenges

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are an emerging technology with the potential to be used in industries and various sectors of human life to provide a wide range of applications and services. During the last decade, there has been a growing focus of research in the UAV's assistance paradigm as a fundamental concept resulting in the constant improvement between different kinds of ground networks and the hovering UAVs in the sky. Recently, the wide availability of embedded wireless interfaces in the communicating entities has allowed the deployment of such a paradigm simpler and easiest. Moreover, due to UAVs' controlled mobility and adjustable altitudes, they can be considered as the most appropriate candidate to enhance the performance and overcome the restrictions of ground networks. This comprehensive survey both studies and summarizes the existing UAV-assisted research, such as routing, data gathering, cellular communications, Internet of Things (IoT) networks, and disaster management that supports existing enabling technologies. Descriptions, classifications, and comparative studies related to different UAV-assisted proposals are presented throughout the paper. By pointing out numerous future challenges, it is expected to simulate research in this emerging and hot research area. To the best of our knowledge, there are many survey papers on the topic from a technology perspective. Nevertheless, this survey can be considered as the first attempt at a comprehensive analysis of different types of existing UAV-assisted networks and describes the state-of-the-art in UAV-assisted research.