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 protect ground user equipments (UEs). In this contribution, conducted measurement campaign A2G introduced. A uniform circular array (UCA) with 16 antenna elements was employed collect downlink signals two different Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks, at heights 0-40m three different, namely rural, urban industrial scenarios. The channel impulse responses (CIRs) been extracted from received data, spatial, including angular, parameters multipath components individual were estimated according high-resolution-parameter-estimation (HRPE) principle. Based on HRPE results, clusters further identified. Finally, comprehensive spatial characteristics investigated composite cluster levels