Enhancing Perceptual Experience of Video Quality in Drone Communications by Using VPN Bonding

Recently, drones are increasingly being used as innovative IoT sensors. The application contexts of UAV systems where there is often a need to transmit time-critical data between the drone and the Internet are increasingly numerous and varied. Keeping this in mind and assuming that most professional UAVs are equipped with multiinterface routers and use virtual private networks (VPNs) to ensure reliable, robust, and secure transmission to the operation room, this letter presents a technique to enhance real-time and time-critical communications such as real-time video streaming. An embedded system, Raspberry-based gateway prototype, was used to create a testbed using a professional drone that captured and transmitted real-time video during a 30-min flight over a rural area characterized by poor mobile radio coverage. A perceptual video quality assessment tool, video multimethod assessment fusion (VMAF), has been employed to evaluate the improvement in terms of video quality perceived by the operator.