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

Abstract

AbstractThis 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%.