Cellular-connected Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Research Articles

Deep-Ensemble-Learning-Based GPS Spoofing Detection for Cellular-Connected UAVs

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are an emerging technology in the 5G-and-beyond systems with the promise of assisting cellular communications and supporting IoT deployment in remote and density areas. Safe and secure navigation is essential for UAV remote and autonomous deployment. Indeed, the opensource simulator can use commercial software-defined radio tools to generate fake global positioning system (GPS) signals and spoof the UAV GPS receiver to calculate wrong locations, deviating from the planned trajectory. Fortunately, the existing mobile positioning system can provide additional navigation for cellular-connected UAVs and verify the UAV GPS locations for spoofing detection, but it needs at least three base stations (BSs) at the same time. In this article, we propose a novel deep-ensemble-learning-based, mobile-network-assisted UAV monitoring and tracking system for cellular-connected UAV spoofing detection. The proposed method uses path losses between BSs and UAVs communication to indicate the UAV trajectory deviation caused by GPS spoofing. To increase the detection accuracy, three statistics methods are adopted to remove environmental impacts on path losses. In addition, deep ensemble learning methods are deployed on the edge cloud servers and use the multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural networks to analyze path losses statistical features for making a final decision, which has no additional requirements and energy consumption on UAVs. The experimental results show the effectiveness of our method in detecting GPS spoofing, achieving above 97% accuracy rate under two BSs, while it can still achieve at least 83% accuracy under only one BS.

Path Planning for Cellular-Connected UAV: A DRL Solution With Quantum-Inspired Experience Replay

In cellular-connected unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) network, a minimization problem on the weighted sum of time cost and expected outage duration is considered. Taking advantage of UAV’s adjustable mobility, a UAV navigation approach is formulated to achieve the aforementioned optimization goal. Conventional offline optimization techniques suffer from inefficiency in accomplishing the formulated UAV navigation task due to the practical consideration of local building distribution and directional antenna radiation pattern. Alternatively, after mapping the navigation task into a Markov decision process (MDP), a deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-aided solution is proposed to help the UAV find the optimal flying direction within each time slot, and thus the designed trajectory towards the destination can be generated. To help the DRL agent commit a better trade-off between sampling priority and diversity, a novel quantum-inspired experience replay (QiER) framework is proposed, via relating experienced transition’s importance to its associated quantum bit (qubit) and applying Grover iteration based amplitude amplification technique. Compared to several representative DRL-related and non-learning baselines, the effectiveness and supremacy of the proposed DRL-QiER solution are demonstrated and validated in numerical results.

Cellular-Connected Multi-UAV MEC Networks: An Online Stochastic Optimization Approach

In this paper, we consider a mobile edge computing (MEC) network where multiple cellular-connected unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can offload their computation tasks to multiple ground base stations (GBSs). In practice, the UAVs are generally unable to master stochastic information of task arrival and channel changes in advance, which may cause a severe issue in terms of energy consumption. Therefore, we formulate a stochastic optimization problem with the goal of minimizing the average weighted sum energy consumption, by jointly optimizing UAV-GBS associations, communication and computation resource allocation, and three-dimensional (3D) UAV trajectories, during which a velocity-triggered penalty term (VTPT) is designed to suppress a large amount of the energy consumption of the UAVs. To handle the stochastic problem, we propose an online resource allocation and trajectory optimization algorithm with outer and inner structures. The outer structure transforms the original problem to a deterministic one by applying the Lyapunov-based optimization framework. The inner structure solves the obtained deterministic problem via the Lagrange duality method and the successive convex approximation technique, based on the block coordinate descent framework. Numerical results demonstrate that: 1) VTPT dramatically decreases the UAVs’ energy consumption, and 2) the proposed algorithm not only reduces the energy consumption but also ensures the computation queue stability compared with other benchmark schemes.

Trajectory Planning of Cellular-Connected UAV for Communication-Assisted Radar Sensing

Being a key technology for beyond fifth-generation wireless systems, joint communication and radar sensing (JCAS) utilizes the reflections of communication signals to detect foreign objects and deliver situational awareness. A cellular-connected unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is uniquely suited to form a mobile bistatic synthetic aperture radar (SAR) with its serving base station (BS) to sense over large areas with superb sensing resolutions at no additional requirement of spectrum. This paper designs this novel BS-UAV bistatic SAR platform, and optimizes the flight path of the UAV to minimize its propulsion energy and guarantee the required sensing resolutions on a series of interesting landmarks. A new trajectory planning algorithm is developed to convexify the propulsion energy and resolution requirements by using successive convex approximation and block coordinate descent. Effective trajectories are obtained with a polynomial complexity. Extensive simulations reveal that the proposed trajectory planning algorithm outperforms significantly its alternative that minimizes the flight distance of cellular-aided sensing missions in terms of energy efficiency and effective consumption fluctuation. The energy saving offered by the proposed algorithm can be as significant as 55%.

Intelligent Reflecting Surface Assisted Interference Mitigation for Cellular-Connected UAV

Air-ground interference mitigation is a challenging issue for integrating unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) into cellular networks, since UAVs can cause/suffer severe interference to/from a large number of co-channel base stations (BSs) in their uplink/downlink communications due to line-of-sight (LoS) UAV-ground channels. In this letter, we propose a new and efficient interference mitigation scheme to tackle this challenge by exploiting the intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) deployed near the BSs. Specifically, in the downlink, the IRS near each co-channel BS tunes its passive beamforming to suppress the BS’s interference to the UAV. While in the uplink, its passive beamforming is tuned to suppress/enhance the interference from the UAV for facilitating the linear/nonlinear interference cancellation (IC) at each co-channel BS. To achieve the optimal UAV-ground performance trade-off, we further propose a hybrid IC scheme to maximize the weighted sum rate of the UAV and ground users in the uplink, by jointly optimizing the set of BSs applying the linear/nonlinear IC and the UAV’s transmit power. Simulation results demonstrate the performance gain of the proposed schemes over benchmark schemes and draw important design insights for IRS-aided UAV communication in cellular networks.

Energy Minimization for Cellular-Connected UAV: From Optimization to Deep Reinforcement Learning

Cellular-connected unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are expected to become integral components of future cellular networks. To this end, one of the important problems to address is how to support energy-efficient UAV operation while maintaining reliable connectivity between those aerial users and cellular networks. In this paper, we aim to minimize the energy consumption of cellular-connected UAV via jointly designing the mission completion time and UAV trajectory, as well as communication base station (BS) associations, while ensuring a satisfactory communication connectivity with the ground cellular network during the UAV flight. An optimization problem is formulated by taking into account the UAV’s flight energy consumption and various practical aspects of the air-ground communication models, including BS antenna pattern, interference from non-associated BSs and local environment. The formulated problem is difficult to tackle due to the lack of closed-form expressions and non-convexity nature. To this end, we first assume that the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">channel knowledge map</i> (CKM) or radio map for the considered area is available, which contains rich information about the relatively stable (large-scale) channel parameters. By utilizing <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">path discretization</i> technique, we obtain a discretized equivalent problem and develop an efficient solution based on graph theory by employing convex optimization technique and a dynamic-weight shortest path algorithm over graph. Next, we study the more practical case that the CKM is unavailable initially. By transforming the optimization problem to a Markov decision process (MDP), we develop a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) algorithm based on multi-step learning and double Q-learning over a dueling Deep Q-Network (DQN) architecture, where the UAV acts as an agent to explore and learn its moving policy according to its local observations of the measured signal samples. Extensive simulations are carried out and the results show that our proposed designs significantly outperform baseline schemes. Furthermore, our results reveal new insights of energy-efficient UAV flight with connectivity requirements and unveil the tradeoff between UAV energy consumption and time duration along line segments.

Cooperative Cellular UAV-to-Everything (C-U2X) communication based on 5G sidelink for UAV swarms

A swarm of cellular-connected Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) enables new possibilities for emerging services and applications as the UAVs can autonomously coordinate their activities and cooperate to accomplish a given task. Because of spatio-temporal dynamics of swarm topology, robust and reliable network formation with seamless connectivity among UAVs is highly critical for any successful mission. This work focuses on the problem of cooperative and communication-aware UAV channel scheduling of data transmission from a set of target points of interests (PoIs) towards a cellular base station (BS). A novel, cooperative multi-hop communication model based on the C-V2X (Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything) Mode 4 cellular sidelink (PC5) radio interface is presented for efficient UAV data flow scheduling within the swarm. The model design aims at optimizing the cellular communications on UAV-to-UAV (U2U) and UAV-to-Infrastructure (U2I) links via a novel interference-aware scheduling, hence envisioning a new Cellular UAV-to-Everything (C-U2X) communication paradigm. An optimization model is used to solve the centralized version of the problem, while a distributed Dynamic Consensus-Based Bundle Algorithm (D-CBBA) is proposed to generate the best subchannel scheduling for maximizing data transmission in a distributed setting. Extensive simulation results demonstrate that the proposed distributed algorithm is able to extend the cellular infrastructure coverage while improving the multi-hop communications by autonomously adapting to the network conditions.

Cellular-Connected UAV With Adaptive Air-to-Ground Interference Cancellation and Trajectory Optimization

This letter studies a cellular-connected unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) scenario, in which a UAV user communicates with ground base stations (GBSs) in cellular uplink by sharing the spectrum with ground users (GUs). To deal with the severe air-to-ground (A2G) co-channel interference, we consider an adaptive interference cancellation (IC) approach, in which each GBS can decode the GU’s messages by adaptively switching between the modes of IC (i.e., precanceling the UAV’s resultant interference) and treating interference as noise (TIN). By designing the GBSs’ decoding mode, jointly with the wireless resource allocation and the UAV’s trajectory control, we maximize the UAV’s data-rate throughput over a finite mission period, while ensuring the minimum data-rate requirements at individual GUs. We propose an efficient algorithm to solve the throughput maximization problem by using the techniques of alternating optimization and successive convex approximation (SCA). Numerical results show that our proposed design significantly improves the UAV’s throughput as compared to the benchmark schemes without the adaptive IC and/or trajectory optimization.

Precoder Design for Physical-Layer Security and Authentication in Massive MIMO UAV Communications

Supporting reliable and seamless wireless connectivity for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has recently become a critical requirement to enable various different use cases of UAVs. Due to their widespread deployment footprint, cellular networks can support beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) communications for UAVs. In this paper, we consider cellular connected UAVs (C-UAVs) that are served by massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) links to extend coverage range, while also improving physical layer security and authentication. We consider Rician channel and propose a novel linear precoder design for transmitting data and artificial noise (AN). We derive the closed-form expression of the ergodic secrecy rate of C-UAVs for both conventional and proposed precoder designs. In addition, we obtain the optimal power splitting factor that divides the power between data and AN by asymptotic analysis. Then, we apply the proposed precoder design in the fingerprint embedding authentication framework, where the goal is to minimize the probability of detection of the authentication tag at an eavesdropper. In simulation results, we show the superiority of the proposed precoder in both secrecy rate and the authentication probability considering moderate and large number of antenna massive MIMO scenarios.

Joint Trajectory Design and BS Association for Cellular-Connected UAV: An Imitation-Augmented Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach

This article concerns the problem of the trajectory design and base station (BS) association for cellular-connected unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). To support safety-critical functions, one primary requirement for UAVs is to maintain reliable cellular connectivity at every time instant during the flight mission. Since the antenna gain of a ground BS (GBS) changes with the position of the UAV, the UAV-GBS association strategy should be jointly considered with the trajectory design, which has not been studied in the prior arts. In this article, we first formulate the problem of joint BS association and trajectory design with the objective of minimizing the mission completion time under a connectivity outage constraint. Then, a deep learning framework is proposed to solve the formulated nonconvex optimization problem in a decoupled manner. For the UAV-GBS association strategy, the signal strength radio map of a given area is constructed, which is used to train a deep neural network (DNN) to approximate the nonlinear mapping from the UAV position to the optimal GBS. To tackle the high complexity due to the coupled decision variables of GBS association and UAV movement, a novel deep reinforcement learning (DRL) approach is developed to learn the optimal trajectory, in which the UAV can learn from its own past good experiences. Our simulation results confirm the superiority of the proposed DRL approach compared to the conventional DRL approaches in terms of the trajectory length. Additionally, it is demonstrated that the nearest association scheme fails to provide reliable cellular connections, whereas our proposed approach can ensure strong connectivity with the GBS during the whole trajectory.

Performance Modeling and Analysis of Base Station Cooperation for Cellular-Connected UAV Networks

This paper studies the performance of base station (BS) cooperation for the downlink transmission of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in a cellular-connected UAV network. Performance models are derived for investigating the downlink transmission performance of a UAV with BS cooperation in terms of coverage probability and achievable throughput. In deriving the performance models, we consider two UAV distribution cases: general case and worst case, in which the locations of UAVs follow different distributions. Meanwhile, we introduce a line-of-sight (LoS) ball model to describe the LoS probability of the downlink channel between a BS and a UAV, and show that it has a good approximation to the ITU LoS model, and can largely simplify the derivation of the performance models. Monte Carlo simulation results are shown to validate the derived performance models. The impacts of major network parameters on the downlink transmission performance are investigated through numerical results. The performance models can be used to provide theoretical guidance for the design of a BS cooperation strategy.

UAV path design with connectivity constraint based on deep reinforcement learning

Cellular networks are expected to communicate effectively with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and support various applications. However, existing cellular networks are primarily designed to cover users on the ground; thus, coverage holes in the sky will exist. In this paper, we investigate the problem of path design for cellular-connected UAVs, taking into account the interruption performance throughout the UAV mission to minimize the completion time. Two types of connectivity constraints requirements are assumed to be available. The first is defined as the maximum continuous time interval that the UAV loses connection with base stations (BSs) below a predefined threshold. For the second, we consider the sum outage of UAV is limited during the entire UAV mission. The UAV is tasked with flying from a starting location to a final destination while minimization the mission time, satisfying the two constraints, separately. The formulated path design problem which involves continues variables and a dynamic radio environment, is not convex and thus is extremely difficult to solve directly. To tackle this challenge, a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) based trajectory design algorithm is proposed, where the Dueling Double Deep Q Network(Dueling DDQN) with multi-steps learning method is applied. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed DRL algorithm and achieve a trade-off between the trajectory length of the UAV and connection quality.

Ensuring reliable connectivity to cellular-connected UAVs with up-tilted antennas and interference coordination

To integrate unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in future large-scale deployments, a new wireless communication paradigm, namely, the cellular-connected UAV has recently attracted interest. However, the line-of-sight dominant air-to-ground channels along with the antenna pattern of the cellular ground base stations (GBSs) introduce critical interference issues in cellular-connected UAV communications. In particular, the complex antenna pattern and the ground reflection (GR) from the down-tilted antennas create both coverage holes and patchy coverage for the UAVs in the sky, which leads to unreliable connectivity from the underlying cellular network. To overcome these challenges, in this paper, we propose a new cellular architecture that employs an extra set of co-channel antennas oriented towards the sky to support UAVs on top of the existing down-tilted antennas for ground user equipment (GUE). To model the GR stemming from the down-tilted antennas, we propose a path-loss model, which takes both antenna radiation pattern and configuration into account. Next, we formulate an optimization problem to maximize the minimum signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) of the UAVs by tuning the up-tilt (UT) angles of the up-tilted antennas. Since this is an NP-hard problem, we propose a genetic algorithm (GA) based heuristic method to optimize the UT angles of these antennas. After obtaining the optimal UT angles, we integrate the 3GPP Release-10 specified enhanced inter-cell interference coordination (eICIC) to reduce the interference stemming from the down-tilted antennas. Our simulation results based on the hexagonal cell layout show that the proposed interference mitigation method can ensure higher minimum SIRs for the UAVs over baseline methods while creating minimal impact on the SIR of GUEs.

Connectivity-Aware 3D UAV Path Design With Deep Reinforcement Learning

In this paper, we study the three-dimensional (3D) path planning problem for cellular-connected unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) taking into account the impact of 3D antenna radiation patterns. The cellular-connected UAV has a mission to travel from an initial location to a destination. In this process, there is a trade-off between the flight time and the expected communication outages duration, which requires planning a suitable route to avoid the weak coverage region. However, as the existing cellular networks are primarily designed for ground coverage, the communication coverage in the sky tends to be intermittent and irregular due to the potential for severe interference and obstructions (such by buildings), which brings great challenges to 3D path planning. To address this challenge, we first construct a 3D coverage map that stores the expected outage probability over each locations. We then propose a multi-step dueling DDQN (multi-step D3QN) based algorithm to design the local optimal UAV path by leveraging the constructed coverage map. In this algorithm, the UAV acts as the agent to learn the appropriate action to complete the flight mission. Numerical results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm for connectivity-aware UAV path planning and the superiority of 3D path design over its 2D counterparts.

Two-Stage Channel Adaptive Algorithm for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Localization with Cellular Networks

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is regarded as a powerful tool to expand the existing ground wireless network into aerial space. Since high mobility is an essential characteristic for UAV, it is important to carry out an accurate, real-time, and high-precision localization in terms of safe operation and communication link maintenance. The cellular network-based localization technology has provided UAV a solution with both high coverage and seamless connection. However, the complex channel environment between the UAV and terrestrial base station (BS) would have weakened the localization performance. To solve this problem, a two-stage channel adaptive algorithm for cellular-connected UAV has been proposed. The first stage of the algorithm is to revise the observation error introduced by the complex channel environment using the model of DDPG. The second stage is to locate the UAV position with TDOA algorithm using the revised observation values. Simulation results have demonstrated that the proposed algorithm can achieve the channel adaptive effect by revising the observation errors and improve location performance greatly, especially for UAVs at a relative lower altitude.

Guest Editorial Special Issue on UAV Communications in 5G and Beyond Networks—Part II

Wireless communication is an essential technology to unlock the full potential of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in numerous applications and has thus received unprecedented attention recently. Although technologies such as direct link, WiFi, and satellite communications are still useful in some remote scenarios where cellular services are unavailable, it is believed that exploiting the thriving 5G and beyond cellular networks to support UAV communications is the most promising and cost-effective approach, especially when the number of UAVs grows dramatically. On the one hand, to guarantee safe and efficient flight operations of multiple UAVs, it is of paramount importance to provide secure and ultra-reliable communication links between the UAVs and their ground pilots or control stations for conveying command and control signals, especially in beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) scenarios. On the other hand, because of advances in communication equipment miniaturization as well as UAV manufacturing, mounting compact and lightweight base stations (BSs) or relays on UAVs becomes increasingly feasible. This has led to two promising research paradigms for UAV communications, namely, UAV-assisted cellular communications and cellular-connected UAVs, where UAVs are integrated into cellular networks as aerial communication platforms and aerial users, respectively. As such, integrating UAVs into cellular networks is believed to be a win-win technology for both UAV-related industries and cellular network operators, which not only creates plenty of new business opportunities but also benefits the communication performance of 3-D wireless networks. In addition, UAV related sensing and computing are also helpful for achieving efficient and reliable communication (e.g., in avoiding coverage holes) as well as smart UAV coordination, positioning, and trajectory design. However, 5G and beyond wireless networks with UAVs significantly differs from traditional communication systems, because of the high altitude and high maneuverability of UAVs, the unique UAV-ground channels, the diversified quality of service (QoS) requirements for downlink command and control (C&C) and uplink mission-related data transmission, the stringent constraints imposed by the size, weight, and power (SWAP) limitations of UAVs, as well as the new design degrees of freedom enabled by joint UAV mobility control and communication resource allocation.

Guest Editorial Special Issue on UAV Communications in 5G and Beyond Networks—Part I

Wireless communication is an essential technology to unlock the full potential of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in numerous applications and has thus received unprecedented attention recently. Although technologies such as direct link, WiFi, and satellite communications are still useful in some remote scenarios where cellular services are unavailable, it is believed that exploiting the thriving 5G and beyond cellular networks to support UAV communications is the most promising and cost-effective approach, especially when the number of UAVs grows dramatically. On the one hand, to guarantee safe and efficient flight operations of multiple UAVs, it is of paramount importance to provide secure and ultra-reliable communication links between the UAVs and their ground pilots or control stations for conveying command and control signals, especially in beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) scenarios. On the other hand, because of advances in communication equipment miniaturization as well as UAV manufacturing, mounting compact and lightweight base stations (BSs) or relays on UAVs becomes increasingly feasible. This has led to two promising research paradigms for UAV communications, namely, UAV-assisted cellular communications and cellular-connected UAVs, where UAVs are integrated into cellular networks as aerial communication platforms and aerial users, respectively. As such, integrating UAVs into cellular networks is believed to be a win-win technology for both UAV-related industries and cellular network operators, which not only creates plenty of new business opportunities but also benefits the communication performance of 3-D wireless networks. In addition, UAV related sensing and computing are also helpful for achieving efficient and reliable communication (e.g., in avoiding coverage holes) as well as smart UAV coordination, positioning, and trajectory design. However, 5G and beyond wireless networks with UAVs significantly differs from traditional communication systems, because of the high altitude and high maneuverability of UAVs, the unique UAV-ground channels, the diversified quality of service (QoS) requirements for downlink command and control (C&C) and uplink mission-related data transmission, the stringent constraints imposed by the size, weight, and power (SWAP) limitations of UAVs, as well as the new design degrees of freedom enabled by joint UAV mobility control and communication resource allocation.

Empirical Low-Altitude Air-to-Ground Spatial Channel Characterization for Cellular Networks Connectivity

Cellular-connected unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have recently attracted a surge of interest in both academia and industry. Understanding the air-to-ground (A2G) propagation channels is essential to enable reliable and/or high-throughput communications for UAVs and protect the ground user equipments (UEs). In this contribution, a recently conducted measurement campaign for the A2G channels is introduced. A uniform circular array (UCA) with 16 antenna elements was employed to collect the downlink signals of two different Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks, at the heights of 0-40m in three different, namely rural, urban and industrial scenarios. The channel impulse responses (CIRs) have been extracted from the received data, and the spatial/angular parameters of the multipath components in individual channels were estimated according to a high-resolution-parameter estimation (HRPE) principle. Based on the HRPE results, clusters of multipath components were further identified. Finally, comprehensive spatial channel characteristics were investigated in the composite and cluster levels at different heights in the three scenarios.

Coordinated Millimeter Wave Beam Selection Using Fingerprint for Cellular-Connected Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Coordinated Millimeter Wave Beam Selection Using Fingerprint for Cellular-Connected Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Real-Time Video Streaming and Control of Cellular-Connected UAV System: Prototype and Performance Evaluation

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) play an increasingly important role in military, public, and civilian applications, where providing connectivity to UAVs is crucial for its real-time control, video streaming, and data collection. Considering that cellular networks offer wide area, high speed, and secure wireless connectivity, cellular-connected UAVs have been considered as an appealing solution to provide UAV connectivity with enhanced reliability, coverage, throughput, and security. Due to the nature of UAVs mobility, the throughput, reliability and End-to-End (E2E) delay of UAVs communication under various flight heights, video resolutions, and transmission frequencies remain unknown. To evaluate these parameters, we develop a cellular-connected UAV testbed based on the Long Term Evolution (LTE) network with its uplink video transmission and downlink control&command (CC) transmission. We also design algorithms for sending control signal and controlling UAV. The indoor experimental results provide fundamental insights for the cellular-connected UAV system design from the perspective of transmission frequency, adaptability, and link outage, respectively.