Performance Analysis of UAV Cellular Communications

Abstract

The days that are to come where remote-controlled aerial vehicles can occupy our skies are quick approaching thanks to the introduction of efficient and reliable tiny aerial vehicles and therefore the increasing demand to be used of such vehicles in an exceedingly excess of civil applications. It is necessary to grasp the characteristics of networks with aerial vehicles to deploy multiple UAVs into the air traffic in a secured and safe manner. In this paper, we analyze the downlink channel performance of cellular connected UAVs located at different heights. We determine the average path loss that can be occurred from the base station to an aerial vehicle located at different heights. We observe that due to the line of sight links interference power is more which leads to poor signal to interference plus noise ratio. In order to increase the throughput and suppress the interference, we employ linear precoding at the transmitter side by assuming perfect channel state information at the base station. We determine the data rates that can be achieved over a 10MHz system bandwidth in downlink when various precoding techniques are applied at transmitter base station. Our results conclude that the achievable data rates decline as the UAV reaches higher altitudes due to more interference power receiving from other base stations.