Ergodic sum rate for uplink NOMA transmission in satellite-aerial-ground integrated networks

The application of Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) technology into satellite-aerial-ground integrated networks can meet the requirements of ultra-high rate and massive connectivity for the Sixth-Generation (6G) communication systems. We consider an uplink NOMA scenario for such a satellite-aerial-ground integrated network where multiple users communicate with satellite under the help of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) as an aerial relay equipped with a phased array. Supposing that buffer-aided decode-and-forward protocol is adopted at the UAV relay, we first formulate an optimization problem to maximize Ergodic Sum Rate (ESR) of the considered system subject to individual power constraint and quality-of-service constraint of each user. Then, with known imperfect channel state information of each user, we propose a joint power allocation and robust Beam Forming (BF) iterative algorithm to maximize ESR for the user-to-UAV link. Besides, to take the advantages of Free-Space Optical (FSO) and millimeter Wave (mmWave) communications, we present a switch-based hybrid FSO/mmWave scheme and a robust BF algorithm for the UAV-to-satellite link to achieve higher rate. Moreover, a closed-form ESR expression is derived. Finally, the effectiveness and correctness of the proposed solutions are verified by numerical simulations, and the performance evaluation results show that the proposed solutions not only achieve performance enhancement and robustness, but also outperform the orthogonal multiple access significantly.     

Biaxial tensile behavior of Ti-6Al-4V under proportional loading

The biaxial tensile behavior of isotropic Ti-6Al-4 V is characterized in this paper. A novel cruciform specimen was designed and optimized to achieve uniform stress and strain distribution within the gauge area. Biaxial tensile tests were conducted at three different loading ratios by the biaxial testing machine. The Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technique was applied to determine strain distribution, and a high-speed camera was employed to record the fracture process. An Inverse Analysis (IA) approach with a combined experimental and numerical method was proposed to determine the true stresses at the gauge section of the specimen during biaxial tensile tests. The results indicate that the initial yield locus can be described by the Cazacu criterion accurately, whereas the Mises criterion can predict better the strengthening behavior of Ti-6Al-4 V in the first quadrant in the principal stress space.     

Green UAV communications for 6G: A survey

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have received a wide range of attention for military and commercial applications. Enhanced with communication capability, UAVs are considered to play important roles in the Sixth Generation (6G) networks due to their low cost and flexible deployment. 6G is supposed to be an all-coverage network to provide ubiquitous connections for space, air, ground and underwater. UAVs are able to provide air-borne wireless coverage flexibly, serving as aerial base stations for ground users, as relays to connect isolated nodes, or as mobile users in cellular networks. However, the onboard energy of small UAVs is extremely limited. Thus, UAVs can be only deployed to establish wireless links temporarily. Prolonging the lifetime and developing green UAV communication with low power consumption becomes a critical challenge. In this article, a comprehensive survey on green UAV communications for 6G is carried out. Specifically, the typical UAVs and their energy consumption models are introduced. Then, the typical trends of green UAV communications are provided. In addition, the typical applications of UAVs and their green designs are discussed. Finally, several promising techniques and open research issues are also pointed out.     

Hardware qualification for scientific ballooning missions

The European Stratospheric Balloon Observatory (ESBO) initiative aims at simplifying the access to stratospheric balloon missions. We plan to provide platforms and support with instrument design in order to support scientists. During the design process, the inevitable question of qualification for the harsh flight conditions arises. Unfortunately, there is no existing standard for qualification of stratospheric ballooning hardware. Thus, we developed a qualification procedure for use within ESBO and similar projects.In this paper, we present our analysis of the environmental conditions in the stratosphere. While conditions at typical balloon float altitudes are similar to the space environment, there are also some relevant differences. For example, the thermal environment is dominated by radiation and thermal conduction, but the remaining atmosphere still supports a certain amount of convection. The remaining atmospheric pressure in the stratosphere also leads to reduced arcing distances. Vibrational loads are far less than for space missions, but quasi-static or shock loads may occur. The criticality of radiation increases with mission duration.Based on the environmental conditions, we present the qualification procedures for ESBO, which are based on the European Cooperation for Space Standardization (ECSS) standards for space systems. Overtesting against too high requirements leads to overengineering, driving mission cost and mitigating the advantages of balloons over space missions. Therefore, we modified the ECSS standards to fit typical scientific ballooning missions over several days at altitudes up to 40 km. Furthermore, we analyzed design rules for space systems with regard to their relevance for scientific ballooning, including material and component selection. We present the experience from the hardware qualification process for the ESBO prototype STUDIO (Stratospheric UV Demonstrator of an Imaging Observatory). Even though boundary conditions are different for each individual mission, we aimed for a broader approach: We investigated more general requirements for scientific ballooning missions to support future flights.     

Exploring 2D projection and 3D spatial information for aircraft 6D pose

The 6D pose estimation is important for the safe take-off and landing of the aircraft using a single RGB image. Due to the large scene and large depth, the exiting pose estimation methods have unstratified performance on the accuracy. To achieve precise 6D pose estimation of the aircraft, an end-to-end method using an RGB image is proposed. In the proposed method, the 2D and 3D information of the keypoints of the aircraft is used as the intermediate supervision, and 6D pose information of the aircraft in this intermediate information will be explored. Specifically, an off-the-shelf object detector is utilized to detect the Region of the Interest (RoI) of the aircraft to eliminate background distractions. The 2D projection and 3D spatial information of the pre-designed keypoints of the aircraft is predicted by the keypoint coordinate estimator (KpNet). The proposed method is trained in an end-to-end fashion. In addition, to deal with the lack of the related datasets, this paper builds the Aircraft 6D Pose dataset to train and test, which captures the take-off and landing process of three types of aircraft from 11 views. Compared with the latest Wide-Depth-Range method on this dataset, our proposed method improves the average 3D distance of model points metric (ADD) and 5° and 5 m metric by 86.8% and 30.1%, respectively. Furthermore, the proposed method gets 9.30 ms, 61.0% faster than YOLO6D with 23.86 ms.