Experimental Quality Assessment of Cellular Networks and their Utilization for UAV Services

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have attracted significant attention. Many potential applications are predicted to bring abundant business opportunities in the next decade thanks to the ubiquitous connectivity of the 4G and 5G cellular networks. Unlike terrestrial deployments, airborne infrastructures have diverse attributes, e.g., increased deployment flexibility, line-of-sight (LoS) connections, and controlled mobility. These attributes bring new research questions and challenges, including LoS dominant ground channels together with increased aerial-terrestrial network interference, the exploitation of the degree of freedom (DoF) provided by the UAV mobility, and the different and tighter quality of service (QoS) requirements for purposes of unmanned traffic management (UTM). Further challenges stem from existing infrastructure oriented towards service availability in low altitudes and low data transfer costs. A key challenge in this context is to achieve and guarantee sufficient service reliability in all altitudes where UTM is planned to be used. Obtained results from the measurement campaign at Twente airport indicate the performance of the 4G cellular network is stable and equals the terrestrial use cases up to 60m of altitude. However, if the altitude increases more, the network performance degrades significantly. In detail, the analysis revealed the fact the performance drop is significant, especially for downlink transmissions (from ground to UAVs), as the strong interference and connection outages were observed in increased numbers.

Automated summary

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have attracted significant attention and offer many potential business opportunities. Airborne infrastructures have unique attributes, such as increased flexibility and line-of-sight connections, which bring new research questions and challenges. Achieving reliable service in all altitudes for unmanned traffic management (UTM) is a key challenge. Results from a measurement campaign at Twente airport showed that the performance of the 4G cellular network is stable up to 60m altitude but degrades significantly at higher altitudes, particularly for downlink transmissions.