inRes 2017 team TWEVO: Communicating mid-flight

In drones, communications are almost everything. It is through radio frequencies that the drone receives coordinates and commands, and it is through radio frequencies that it sends images or other types of information captured during the flight. The less knowledgeable may think that the drones have their own channel of communication, but Carlos Ribeiro, a professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, quickly dispels this idea: “Companies generally just adapt Wi-Fi modems to communications with drones.” This does not always produce the desired effects. “These systems do not cope well with the interference generated when the drone passes by a building full of Wi-Fi modems. Wi-Fi rarely guarantees more than 20 Mbps and if the drone is more than 200 meters away, it will probably be many less than that. ” Carlos Ribeiro knows the problem well and believes he knows the solution: in the second half of 2018, he will debut the first solution to guarantee communications with greater reach, reliability, and resilience in commercial drones. TWEVO is the name of the new brand.