Downlink Performance Analysis in MIMO UAV-Cellular Communication With LOS/NLOS Propagation Under 3D Beamforming

Abstract

Integrating unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as the base station is a recent progress and a promising solution to assist cellular networks to improve coverage. In this paper, an analytical framework is proposed to analyze coverage probability and capacity, using stochastic geometry. We incorporate the air-to-ground (A2G), and two-piece path loss model that undergoes millimeter wave (mmWave) channel fading in both line-of-site (LOS) and non-line-of-site (NLOS). Furthermore, we assume that all users’ equipment’s (UEs) are clustered around Terrestrial Base Stations (TBS) and UAVs, according to Poisson Cluster Process (PCP), i.e., Matern cluster process. We also propose Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) transmission where multiple single-antenna UAVs simultaneously communicate with TBS. Initially, we obtain expressions for association probability with each tier. After that, we derive downlink coverage expression based on signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR), by assuming 3D directional beamforming with UAV height being not fixed. Numerical results demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed approach.