Technology Assessment for Radio Communication between UAV and Ground: Qualitative Study and Applications

In this paper, we develop an analytic methodology to determine the best technology to carry the communication between an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and a ground control station (GCS). We assume herein that the UAV is performing its mission under nominal conditions. For this, we identify some relevant criteria that cover most use-cases. We propose a multi-criteria analysis to determine the best technology to carry the radio- communication between the UAV and the GCS. In this work, we distinguish between the Control and Non- Payload Communication Channel (CNPC) and the Payload Channel. By studying two different missions, we emphasize that the technology assessment results depend on the use-case as well as the UAV scenario, and that for a same scenario the results for CNPC are different from the Payload communication. In this work, we are focused on the precise agriculture (PA) use-case, and the public safety (PS) use case. We present the assessment results in both Visual Line of Sight (VLOS), and Beyond Line of Sight (BVLOS) scenarios. The latter is very interesting because the communication UAV - GCS becomes of critical importance.