# Adaptable and Automated Small UAV Deployments via Virtualization
## 3 System Design  
As previously mentioned, our work studies the applicability of virtualization technologies and standards to build flexible SUAV deployments, capable of agilely adapting to different missions in the civilian scope. With this objective, we consider the utilization of NFV, along with general purpose hardware and software platforms that can be on-boarded into small aerial vehicles. These platforms will provide the underlying substrate to execute network, transport and application level functions, which will be implemented in software and deployed over the SUAVs as required using virtualization technologies. The use of NFV technologies in SUAV environments offers a number of potential advantages: (1) the ability to flexibly adapt the functions offered by SUAVs to the specific mission requirements or objectives; (2) the capacity to agilely deploy moderately complex SUAV services and applications, installing and configuring the necessary components within a limited time period; (3) it facilitates the development of new functions and services, with the possibility of testing them in controlled environments with similar characteristics compared to their corresponding production environments,as well as evolving and replacing them quickly; (4) the provision of open platforms, which offers new possibilities for the incorporation of developers and manufacturers, including other communities in the sector of information technologies and communications to promote innovation; (5) the flexibility to accommodate deployment scenarios with changing resource demands, for example by incorporating new virtualized functions or scaling them as it becomes necessary; and (6) in general, reduction of investment and maintenance costs, through the use of general purpose platforms (e.g., open platforms), whose manufacturing and supply costs can be reduced by economies of scale. Despite the aforementioned potential benefits of using NFV in the context of SUAVs, we want to note that it also introduces a series of technical challenges that must be carefully considered. On the one hand, the hardware equipment that can be on-boarded in an SUAV, providing the underlying substrate to support the execution of virtualized functions, is typically limited in terms of size and weight. This is especially evident in the case of the small-sized UAVs that have recently emerged in the market, which could at best carry a small set of Single-Board Computers (SBCs). In this way, the hardware platform for the execution of virtual functions can present significant limitations in terms of computing capacity, networking and storage. On the other hand, such hardware must be integrated as part of the NFV infrastructure of an existing VIM solution, in such a way that it can be used by an NFV orchestration service to deploy virtualized functions. Additionally, it should be possible to make an appropriate distribution of VNFs to SUAVs, in order to indicate which VNFs should be executed on the same aircraft. Moreover, the control communications that are necessary to manage the infrastructure resources carried by the SUAVs should be maintained, even when these devices are flying. Finally, we must consider that the UAVs have a battery, and therefore a limited operating time. For this reason, specific mechanisms may be required to support the replacement of these devices, including the migration of the virtualized functions hosted by them to new or existing SUAV units. We must bear in mind that these requirements are not common in traditional virtualization platforms, where compute nodes are typically high performance servers, installed in a data-center, and interconnected through a high capacity fixed network technology (e.g., an ethernet network). Given the complexity of these challenges and to guarantee the architectural and technological convergence of our work with existing solutions, our proposal has been designed in accordance with recognized standards in the NFV arena.