A grid-based coverage analysis of urban mmWave vehicular ad hoc networks. IEEE Communications Letters.

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Commercial applications of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are expected to be one of the disruptive technologies that can shape many activities spans from goods delivery to surveillance. To maximize the effectiveness of such UAV applications, it is very important to enable beyond-line-of-sight (BLoS) communications. Hence, integrated UAV with LTE network can be used to extend UAV operations beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS) communications. This paper investigates the ability of Long-Term Evolution (LTE) network to provide coverage for UAV in such rural area, in particular for the Command and Control (C2) downlink. The system design carried out takes into consideration the dependency of the large-scale path loss on the height of the UAV in the simulation environment, which is obtained from industrial measurements, and a realworld communication infrastructure layout and configuration. Key performance factors for the quality of service (QoS) of the channel are the signal strength and throughput performance levels at the UAV vehicle. Results show that UAV height is a very critical factor in terms of delay and jitter performance for urban micro scenarios, and less affective in urban macro scenarios. Furthermore, the number of the available LTE base stations for backhaul connections, fluctuates as the UAV ascends to higher altitudes and average throughput performance is less sensitive to the change in parameters and communication environments when the application type is set as a 1080p-quality video feed. Besides, mobility performance is explored for different system parameters such as hysteresis margin, time-to-trigger under various communications scenarios. Finally, the finding presented in this paper can be a roadmap to facilitate UAV-LTE integration in the near future.

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