Experimental Evaluation of Cellular Networks for UAV Operation and Services

Marques, Hugo; Marques, Paulo; Ribeiro, Jorge; Alves, Tiago M. F.; Pereira, L.C.P.

doi:10.1109/camad.2019.8858453

Cited by 16 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Marques et al [14] performed an experimental study for using LTE as the communicating network for aerial vehicles, in rural areas. They measured the uplink and downlink throughput for different low-altitude elevations.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Exhaustive Study of Using Commercial LTE Network for UAV Communication in Rural Areas

Gharib¹,

Nandadapu²,

Afghah³

2021

Preprint

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Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been increasingly used in a wide area of military and civilian applications such as data collection and monitoring. A reliable network for command and control, communication, and data transfer is crucial, not only for mission purposes but also for safety concerns. The already deployed cellular networks are appropriate candidates for UAV communication given the solid security and wide coverage of these networks. However, the reliability of such networks needs a comprehensive investigation. In this paper, we use the long-term evolution (LTE) network as the infrastructure for drone communication and data transfer, in a rural area. We study the communication characteristics of an LTE-connected drone during low-altitude flights, for different altitudes and UAV speeds. We show that, in such areas, the higher elevation benefits from a better signal quality and experiences a fewer number of handover processes. Higher speed flights also slightly degrade the communication performance 1 .

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Exhaustive Study of Using Commercial LTE Network for UAV Communication in Rural Areas

Gharib¹,

Nandadapu²,

Afghah³

2021

Preprint

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“…A number of studies performed experimental measurements with UAVs to evaluate the performance of eMBB in urban and suburban environments. While the authors of [5], [171], [176] analyze the data rate performance along with signal quality, the article, [175], also consider the handover conditions at different altitudes and evaluate how the handovers influence the data rate performance. Measurements report the maximum average data rate to be 40 Mbps on the IL and 20 Mbps on the EL [175].…”

Section: A Direct Air-to-ground Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the average latency is 200-300 ms at 50-100 m altitude, the maximum latency is measured to be 2.5-3 s at 300 m. Such large latency values exceed the requirements for the remote piloting of UAVs (table X) and show the performance degradation of current cellular networks at high altitudes. Differently, the authors of [176] measure the average Round-trip Time (RTT) in the range 76-92 ms up to a 150 m altitude.…”

Section: A Direct Air-to-ground Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Survey of Wireless Networks for Future Aerial COMmunications (FACOM)

Baltaci,

Dinc,

Ozger

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Electrification turned over a new leaf in aviation by introducing new types of aerial vehicles along with new means of transportation. Addressing a plethora of use cases, drones are gaining attention in the industry and increasingly appear in the sky. Emerging concepts of flying taxi enable passengers to be transported over several tens of kilometers. Therefore, unmanned traffic management systems are under development to cope with the complexity of future airspace, thereby resulting in unprecedented communication needs. Moreover, the long-term increase in the number of commercial airplanes pushes the limits of voice-oriented communications, and future options such as single-pilot operations demand robust connectivity. In this survey, we provide a comprehensive review and vision for enabling the connectivity applications of aerial vehicles utilizing current and future communication technologies. We begin by categorizing the connectivity use cases per aerial vehicle and analyzing their connectivity requirements. By reviewing more than 500 related studies, we aim for a comprehensive approach to cover wireless communication technologies, and provide an overview of recent findings from the literature toward the possibilities and challenges of employing the wireless communication standards. After analyzing the proposed network architectures, we list the open-source testbed platforms to facilitate future investigations by researchers. This study helped us observe that while numerous works focused on cellular technologies to enable connectivity for aerial platforms, a single wireless technology is not sufficient to meet the stringent connectivity demands of the aerial use cases, especially for the piloting operations. We identified the need of further investigations on multi-technology heterogeneous network architectures to enable robust and real-time connectivity in the sky. Future works should consider suitable technology combinations to develop unified aerial networks that can meet the diverse quality of service demands of the aerial use cases.

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“…The authors in [101] have demonstrated the feasibility of UAV operation via commercial cellular network for high data connectivity in low altitude and BVLoS operations throughout different times of the day.…”

Section: Field Trialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Survey on Cellular-connected UAVs: Design Challenges, Enabling 5G/B5G Innovations, and Experimental Advancements

Mishra¹,

Natalizio²

2020

Preprint

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As an emerging field of aerial robotics, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have gained significant research interest within the wireless networking research community. As soon as national legislations allow UAVs to fly autonomously, we will see swarms of UAV populating the sky of our smart cities to accomplish different missions: parcel delivery, infrastructure monitoring, event filming, surveillance, tracking, etc. The UAV ecosystem can benefit from existing 5G/B5G cellular networks, which can be exploited in different ways to enhance UAV communications. Because of the inherent characteristics of UAV pertaining to flexible mobility in 3D space, autonomous operation and intelligent placement, these smart devices cater to wide range of wireless applications and use cases. This work aims at presenting an in-depth exploration of integration synergies between 5G/B5G cellular systems and UAV technology, where the UAV is integrated as a new aerial User Equipment (UE) to existing cellular networks. In this integration, the UAVs perform the role of flying users within cellular coverage, thus they are termed as cellular-connected UAVs (a.k.a. UAV-UE, drone-UE, 5G-connected drone, or aerial user). The main focus of this work is to present an extensive study of integration challenges along with key 5G/B5G technological innovations and ongoing efforts in design prototyping and field trials corroborating cellular-connected UAVs. This study highlights recent progress updates with respect to 3GPP standardization and emphasizes socio-economic concerns that must be accounted before successful adoption of this promising technology. Various open problems paving the path to future research opportunities are also discussed.

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Experimental Evaluation of Cellular Networks for UAV Operation and Services

Cited by 16 publications

References 4 publications

An Exhaustive Study of Using Commercial LTE Network for UAV Communication in Rural Areas

An Exhaustive Study of Using Commercial LTE Network for UAV Communication in Rural Areas

A Survey of Wireless Networks for Future Aerial COMmunications (FACOM)

A Survey on Cellular-connected UAVs: Design Challenges, Enabling 5G/B5G Innovations, and Experimental Advancements

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