Abstract
The network operators will soon be accommodating a new type of users: unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). 5G New Radio (NR) technology operating in the millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequency bands can support the emerging bandwidth-hungry applications facilitated by such aerial devices. To reliably integrate UAVs into the NR-based network infrastructure, new system models that capture the features of UAVs in urban environments are required. As city building blocks constitute one of the primary sources of blockage on the links from the UAV to its serving base station (BS), the corresponding line-of-sight (LoS) probability models are essential for accurate performance evaluation in realistic scenarios. We propose a LoS probability model in UAV communication setups over regular urban grid deployments, which is based on a Manhattan Poisson line process. Our approach captures different building height distributions as well as their dimensions and densities. Under certain characteristic distributions, closed-form expressions for the LoS probability are offered. Our numerical results demonstrate the importance of accounting for the building height distribution type as well as the orientation of the UAV with respect to its BS. By comparing our model with the standard ITU and 3GPP formulations, we establish that the latter provide an overly optimistic approximation for various deployments.
Highlights
A CCORDING to recent studies, millimeter-wave communication promises to support connectivity between unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and their serving radio infrastructure [1], [2]
We develop a model for the LoS probability evaluation on the base station (BS)-to-UAV link operating over mmWave frequency bands in 3D regular urban grid deployments as a function of building density as well as heights of the UAV, BS, and buildings
Our numerical results demonstrate that the UAV LoS probability heavily depends on the BS-to-UAV link orientation with respect to the non-isotropic deployment grid
Summary
A CCORDING to recent studies, millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication promises to support connectivity between unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and their serving radio infrastructure [1], [2]. As we review, most of these earlier efforts consider fixed building heights and/or widths as well as randomized building layouts These deployment parameters may significantly affect the resultant LoS probability, especially in urban grid scenarios. Our performance evaluation campaign demonstrates that the LoS probability is highly sensitive to the (i) type of the urban grid deployment, (ii) form of the building height distribution, and (iii) UAV location with respect to the BS. Our comparison of the proposed model with the existing standardized formulations (e.g., those by 3GPP and ITU-R) indicates that the latter offer an overly optimistic approximation for the UAV LoS probability for a range of various deployments The rest of this text is organized as follows.
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