Interference Analysis for UAV Connectivity over LTE Using Aerial Radio Measurements

Abstract

The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) for civilian and commercial services has experienced a significant increase in the past couple of years. Emerging UAV enabled services, however, require extended beyond-visual-line-of-sight geographical range. One key regulatory requirement for these services is that the radio communication link must reliably cover a wide(er) area, when compared to the visual-line-of-sight range radio links currently used. Standardized cellular systems such as Long Term Evolution UMTS (LTE), are an obvious candidate to provide the radio communication link to UAVs. In this paper, we use empirical measurements in live rural LTE networks to assess the impact of uplink and downlink radio interference on the UAV radio connectivity performance. Further, we provide a baseline analysis on the potential of interference mitigation schemes, needed to provide a reliable radio connectivity to the UAVs.