A Brief Overview of Waveforms for UAV Air-to-Ground Communication Systems

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have tremendous potential in both military and civilian applications. Due to the increasing demand for cost-efficient yet reliable small UAVs in a plethora of civilian applications, the technical advances in cooperative UAV systems have provided a boost for UAV communication network research. However, there is a paucity of surveys on the waveforms for UAV communications. This treatise is focused on the modulation techniques from the view of single- and multi-carrier transmission, and transmitter joint linearization for UAV air-to-ground (A2G) communication. We also provide insights into remaining challenge and open issues for the further development.