Millimeter-wave UAV coverage in urban environments

Kang, Seongjoon; Mezzavilla, Marco; Lozano Solsona, Angel; Geraci, Giovanni; Xia, William; Rangan, Sundeep; Semkin, Vasilii; Loianno, Giuseppe

doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/GLOBECOM46510.2021.9685535

Millimeter-wave UAV coverage in urban environments

Citation

Kang S, Mezzavilla M, Lozano A, Geraci G, Xia W, Rangan S, Semkin V, Loianno G. Millimeter-wave UAV coverage in urban environments. In: 2021 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM): proceedings; 2021 Dec 7-11: Madrid, Spain. [Piscataway]: IEEE; 2021. [6 p.]. DOI: 10.1109/GLOBECOM46510.2021.9685535

Abstract

With growing interest in mmWave connectivity for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), a basic question is whether networks intended for terrestrial service can provide sufficient aerial coverage as well. To assess this possibility in the context of urban environments, extensive system-level simulations are conducted using a generative channel model recently proposed by the authors. It is found that standard downtilted base stations at street level, deployed with typical microcellular densities, can indeed provide satisfactory UAV coverage. Interestingly, this coverage is made possible by a conjunction of antenna sidelobes and strong reflections. As the deployments become sparser, the coverage is only guaranteed at progressively higher UAV altitudes. The incorporation of base stations dedicated to UAV communication, rooftop-mounted and uptilted, would strengthen the coverage provided their density is comparable to that of the standard deployment, and would be instrumental for sparse deployments of the latter.