An Exhaustive Study of Using Commercial LTE Network for UAV Communication in Rural Areas

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been increasingly used in a wide area of military and civilian applications such as data collection and monitoring. A reliable network for command and control, communication, and data transfer is crucial, not only for mission purposes but also for safety concerns. The already deployed cellular networks are appropriate candidates for UAV communication given the solid security and wide coverage of these networks. However, the reliability of such networks needs a comprehensive investigation. In this paper, we use the long-term evolution (LTE) network as the infrastructure for drone communication and data transfer, in a rural area. We study the communication characteristics of an LTE-connected drone during low-altitude flights, for different altitudes and UAV speeds. We show that, in such areas, the higher elevation benefits from a better signal quality and experiences a fewer number of handover processes. Higher speed flights also slightly degrade the communication performance.