Adaptive beam design for UAV network with uniform plane array

Abstract

To support millimeter wave (mmWave) communications for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) networks, many beamforming and tracking methods have been proposed. However, unstable beam pointing (UBP) problem between UAVs results from the wind or the estimation error of position is always ignored. In this paper, an adaptive beam design strategy is presented to overcome this shortcoming. Firstly, combining the feedback information of the beam deviation measured by different sensors, an equivalent model of time-varying channel is established, and the formulation of the expected data rate (EDR) is released. Then, combining the EDR and greedy geometric (GG) algorithm, a novel beam design method is presented. Finally, the performance of our proposed method is analyzed and compared with traditional ones. The experiment data proves that, when the problem of UBP happens, the proposed method can effectively improve the EDR of the group as well as lower complexity, which is of great significance in UAVs network.