A Study on the Influence of 5G Network planning on communication in Urban Air Mobility

The emerging implementation of urban air mobility (UAM) is in need of a robust low latency communication system. The key priority is to cope with the required high level of safety assurance. 5G communication standards lay the foundation for a promising communication infrastructure, yet there exists the challenge of connectivity and coverage through the base station network. In this paper, we address this aspect and study the realization of a reliable and efficient 5G base station plan and evaluate its influence on the performance of the UAM communication system through simulations. Our findings can assist in real UAM deployment scenarios to search for the most cost effective radio network planning solution. We focus on the 3d-channel model and on the number and placement of base stations. As a use case we consider the Hamburg metropolitan region.