Integration of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Wireless Communication and Networks

D. N. K. Jayakody is a Senior Member IEEE, Fellow, IET, and received the Ph. D. degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering, from the University College Dublin, Ireland. He received his MSc degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering from the Eastern Mediterranean University, Turkey (under the University full graduate scholarship). Since 2022, he is with the COPELABS, Lusófona University, Lisbon, Portugal. He also serves as the Head/ School of Postgraduate & Research, Sri Lanka Technological Campus (SLTC), Padukka Sri Lanka and Founding head of Centre of Telecommunication Research, SLTC, Sri Lanka since Jan 2019. He is supervising/supervised 15 PhD students and many master and undergraduate students and 5 Postdoc researchers. From 2014 - 2016, he was a Postdoc Research Fellow at University of Tartu, Estonia and University of Bergen, Norway. From 2016 to 2022 he was a Professor at the School of Computer Science & Robotics, National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU), Russia.

He held visiting and/or sabbatical positions at the Center for Telecommunications Research, University of Sydney, Australia in 2015 and Texas A&M University in 2018. He was a visiting professor at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland both in 2019 and 2022 within the framework of the Academy of Finland. He also served as a visiting professor at the University of Juiz de Fora in Brazil in 2019. From 2019-2022, he has been a resource person/visiting professor for the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, National Institute of Tiruchirappalli, India, within the SPARC project of the Ministry of Human Resources in India. Prof. Jayakody has received the best paper award from the International Conference on Communication, Management and Information Technology (ICCMIT) in 2017 and International Conference on Emerging Technologies of Information and Communications, Bhutan, March 2019. In July 2019, Prof. Jayakody received the Education Leadership Award from the World Academic Congress in 2019. In 2017 and 2018, he received the outstanding faculty award by National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University, Russia. He also received the Distinguished Researcher in Wireless Communications in Chennai, India 2019. Prof. Jayakody received the Presidential Award for outstanding research performance in the year 2021. He also received "Best Publication Award" at the Sri Lanka Technological Campus, Sri Lanka in 2019 and 2020.

Dr. P. Muthuchidambaranathan received his B.Engg. Degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Government College of Technology, Coimbatore, India, in 1992, the M.Engg. Degree in Microwave and Optical Engineering, from A.C. College of Engineering and Technology, Karaikudi, India, in 1994. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in optical communication from the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Tiruchirappalli, India in 2009. He is currently working as a Professor and Head of the department in the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, National Institute of Technology (NIT), Tiruchirappalli, India. His research interests include recent technologies in wireless communications, and optical communications. He published his research papers in refereed international journals, and international and national conferences. He is an author of the textbook "Wireless Communications" (published by Prentice Hall of India).

Rui Dinis (S'96, M'00, SM'14) received the Ph.D. degree from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal, in 2001 and the Habilitation in Telecommunications from Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia (FCT), Universidade Nova de Lisboa (UNL), in 2010. From 2001 to 2008 he was a Professor at IST. Currently he is an associated professor at FCT-UNL. During 2003 he was an invited professor at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He was a researcher at CAPS (Centro de Análise e

Processamento de Sinal), IST, from 1992 to 2005 and a researcher at ISR (Instituto de Sistemas e Robótica) from 2005 to 2008. Since 2009 he is a researcher at IT (Instituto de Telecomunicações). He has been actively involved in several national and international research projects in the broadband wireless communications area. His research interests include transmission, estimation and detection techniques. Rui Dinis is editor at IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on Communications (Transmission Systems - Frequency-Domain Processing and Equalization) and IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology. He was also a guest editor for Elsevier Physical Communication (Special Issue on Broadband Single-Carrier Transmission Techniques).

Stefan Panic was born in 1983 in Pirot, Serbia. He has completed his first degree from the faculty of Electronic Engineering University of Nis. He received his PhD at Electronic Faculty of the University of Nis in 2010. From 01.10.2010 he worked as teaching assistant at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in Kosovska Mitrovica, and since 2011 as Assistant Professor (Docent) at the Faculty of Science and Mathematics in Kosovska Mitrovica. In the same institution in 2016, he was elected as an Associate Professor for a scientific field Information and communication technologies. He served as the Head of the Department for Informatics in the period from 2012 to 2018. During 2016-2018, he was Chairman of the Commission for self-evaluation and quality assurance of faculties. In 2018/2019 he was on Postdoc position at the Tomsk Polytechnic University, Russia. He authored or co-authored of more than 150 works in the field of theory of telecommunications, of which more than 50 papers have been published or accepted for printing in magazines from the SCI list. The number of heteroclites in the international magazines and monographs is 95. He authors two monographs of international importance, as well as three textbooks.