Title: ML-Powered UAV Condition Monitoring: Optimizing Reliability, Communication, and Edge Intelligence

Abstract: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are rapidly becoming integral to the infrastructure of emerging smart cities, enabling diverse applications ranging from surveillance and logistics to infrastructure inspection. However, the deployment of UAVs at scale hinges on their operational reliability and the efficiency of supporting communication and computation systems. This keynote explores recent advancements in machine learning-based UAV condition monitoring frameworks, emphasizing the need for end-to-end optimization across the sensing, processing, and communication architecture.

We delve into techniques for real-time rotor fault detection using vibration signal analysis, efficient feature extraction pipelines accelerated through low-level optimization and parallelism, and strategies for drastically reducing network resource utilization without sacrificing model accuracy. Furthermore, we present a novel deep learning approach to signal companding that reduces power consumption in sensor nodes by minimizing the Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR) of vibration waveforms—thus extending the viability of UAV monitoring in constrained environments.

By integrating principles from signal processing, embedded ML, and communication systems design, this talk outlines a path forward for building scalable, power-aware, and network-efficient UAV monitoring solutions that meet the reliability demands of smart urban ecosystems.

Bio: Abdallah Shami (Fellow IEEE) is currently a Professor and Chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Western University, London, ON, Canada, where he is also the Director of the Optimized Computing and Communications Laboratory. Dr. Shami has chaired key symposia for the IEEE GLOBECOM, IEEE International Conference on Communications, and IEEE International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications. He was the elected Chair for the IEEE Communications Society Technical Committee on Communications Software and the IEEE London Ontario Section Chair. He is currently an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, and IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials journals. Dr. Shami is the Chair of IEEE Region 7 Publications and Communications Committee. Dr. Shami is a Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE), and a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC).