MIMO Relaying UAVs Operating in Public Safety Scenarios

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The present work is an interesting and well-designed paper that deals with a near-future problem.

As for a theoretical point of view, the work is well written, scientifically soundly, and correct. However they should discuss the processing and decision-making framework and its computational requirements. A good basis is the work: A Framework for Analyzing Fog-Cloud Computing Cooperation Applied to Information Processing of UAVs.

Considering a more practical point of view, it is well-known that a drone can fly 20 up to 30minutes. Also, considering the transfer time from the respective charging base and mission position and back, the mission time is quite reduced. In this scenario it will be necessary to change both the users and final position. As a given job must be transferred from one agent to another one, how could this impact the mission accomplishing considering your desing? 

Author Response

Please see the attachment the answers from the reviewer’s comments.

Best Regards

Joseanne Viana

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors, thanks for your work. The paper is about the use of UAVs for extending (or implementing) lte/5g communication. Relay networks is a deeply studied field and this kind of papers is usually interesting and useful to prove the effectiveness of UAVs. However, in my opinion, the paper needs some improvements. 1) First of all, I was not able to understand the novelty or what authors want to show through this article. The use of a network simulator is ok, but the paper seems an exercise/tutorial because it is focused on an introduction and on the results. I'm sure there is more in authors notes and it must be reported. 2) It would be interesting a paragraph on the management of such group of flying UAVs. Authors speak about relay network and UAVs flying up to 108km/h, but the description lacks of some discussions about endurance and collision avoidance. Even if the paper is focused on network simulation, at least a discussion would be appreciated to make the simulation realistic. The discussion can be made in the introduction, including some references on the management of a formation of UAVs and in the conclusions. Although I made few comments, I think they are very important and I hope they will be useful to improve your paper.

Author Response

Please see the attachment the answers from the reviewer’s comments.

Best Regards

Joseanne Viana

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

General comments:

The paper is easy to read and understandable. They adequately explain the problem of the research and proposes an adequate methodology for its study. The purpose and goal of the work is current and interesting for publication. Great job by the authors!.

Please consider some observations and suggestions:

Author filiations have to be improved, it seems all authors have different filiations (1, 2, 3 and 4 super indexes) but only one reference is described. Can authors clarify and correct this point?. Nowadays an Orcid identification is often and help to identify authors, please include it when possible.

The acronym UAVs is referred on line 13 or 21 and explained in line 28. Please correct the situation of this explanation.

Please check if you have to include also explanations for other acronyms as V2X or PSFCH

Please, remark Acknowledgments or Conflict of interest as the Instructions for Authors refers (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/drones/instructions).

Do you consider a specific point for Data availability Statement or supplementary materials. This is very appreciate for researches that would like to use your research data to reproduce your studies.

 

Please, consider some other specific comments:

Line 193. Can you clarify the word reference “enB”?

Line 199.  You have to remove the reference [36]. It is not available yet for review. When this paper will be published, the reference is not available due to the Congress will be in the future.

Lines 276 – 279, Can you improve the explanation of the figure 7?. Authors show 4 or 8 users in the graphic and the explanation refers 6 or 9?. Understanding this figure is so important for your research, it would be very interest if you increase the significance and explanation of it.

In the same way, your study refers three important tests exposed on figures 5, 6 and 7. The conclusions explain your result in figures 5 and 6 but the number 7 is out and you have to include in the final part of your conclusions.

And finally, congratulations to the authors for this interesting and actual paper. It has been a pleasure reading and review your article.

Kind regards,

Author Response

Please see the attachment the answers from the reviewer’s comments.

Best Regards

Joseanne Viana

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

good job responding this reviewer questions.

Parabéns aos autores.