UGPL: A MATLAB application for UAV-to-Ground path loss calculations

Abstract

<h2>Abstract</h2> The UGPL (unmanned Air Vehicle to ground path loss), a Matlab application, is used for Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV) communication channel calculations. It is developed to consider the different environment types and the antenna loss. In addition, it considers the effect of the elevation angle on the path loss and coverage calculations. The application consists of two sub-applications. The first sub-application makes the channel calculations under certain max allowable path loss to find the optimum elevation angle that maximizes the coverage radius. The second sub-application calculates the path loss versus elevation angle at a certain UAV height. The UGPL outputs of optimum elevation angle, path loss, and coverage radius are important inputs for UAV network deployment and planning.