4G Network for Air-Ground Data Transmission: A Drone Based Experiment

Abstract

Today's commercially available drones commonly make use of the 2.4 GHz channel for remote communication. A drawback is the short communication range. To remedy the drawback, we explore the use of 4G network as an alternative. A drone-based experiment platform is developed to evaluate 4G network for air-ground data transmission. Our field experiment shows that 4G network is capable of supporting low-altitude air-ground communication with good connectivity and low packet loss although the packet loss would increase substantially when the signal strength decreases.