A new connectivity model for unmanned aerial vehicle communications and flying height optimization

Imran Mohammed, Iain B. Collings*, Stephen V. Hanly

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

9 Citations (Scopus)
117 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

This paper presents a new connectivity model for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communications. We present closed-form formulas for the probability of line-of-sight as a function of UAV height and distance to a ground based receiver, based on a two-dimensional model of building and UAV locations. We show that our formulas exactly match Monte-Carlo simulated values, whereas the existing approach over-predicts by a factor of 2 to 3. We use the model to optimize the flying height for a UAV deployed as a mobile base station, where the goal is to maximize the number of possible connected users. We observe that the optimal height has a log-linear characteristic. We use this to present a closed-form formula for optimal height. We show that our techniques predict the height within 4% of realistic Monte-Carlo simulations, and significantly outperform existing approaches which are shown to over-predict by 40%–50%.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere4767
Pages (from-to)1-20
Number of pages20
JournalTransactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies
Volume34
Issue number6
Early online date24 Mar 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2023

Bibliographical note

Copyright the Author(s) 2023. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.

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