Evaluating UAV-to-Car Communications Performance: Testbed Experiments

Abstract

Vehicular networks are gradually emerging due to the expected benefits in terms of enhanced safety and infotainment services. However, outside main metropolitan areas, little infrastructure currently deployed, which may hinder these services. To mitigate this problem, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are envisioned as mobile infrastructure elements, supporting communications when fixed infrastructure is missing. This way, in emergency situations, UAVs can offer services to vehicles including broadcasting alerts or acting as message relays between ground vehicles. Our work attempts to be a first step in this direction by presenting experimental measurement results regarding communications quality between cars and UAVs. In particular, we varied the altitude of the drone and its antenna orientation, and the car's antenna location to assess their impact on performance. Based on the experimental results achieved, we find that UAVs communicating in the 5 GHz band using IEEE 802.11 technology are able to deliver data to moving cars within a range of more than three kilometers, achieving more than 0.5 of packet delivery ratio up to 2.5 kilometers under the optimal configuration settings.