UAV-based Internet of Vehicles: A systematic literature review

Abstract

The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is a network of Internet-enabled intelligent vehicles outfitted with sensors, customized software, and communication technologies, which is a result of the development of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have recently sparked much interest in both VANETs and IoV ecosystems. UAVs-enabled techniques can be used to facilitate various IoV applications. This paper investigates UAV-based IoV approaches using a systematic literature review (SLR) methodology. We review 41 research papers on UAV-enabled IoV approaches published from 2018 to 2022. Our taxonomy reveals that research publications are divided into two main categories, including network requirements, and processing requirements. The results of our investigation on evaluation factors of UAV-based IoV approaches show that the delay factor has the highest frequency in network requirements, with 33%, whereas the energy consumption factor has the highest frequency in processing requirements, with 41%. In this paper, we highlight the most significantly utilized subjects in the UAV-based IoV ecosystem and investigate the hot keywords, communication protocols, implementation strategies, and performance evaluation metrics. Finally, we discuss outstanding issues and future research challenges in the UAV-based IoV domain.