A Survey of Channel Modeling for UAV Communications

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have attracted great interest in rapid deployment for both civil and military applications. UAV communication has its own distinctive channel characteristics compared to the widely used cellular or satellite systems. Accurate channel characterization is crucial for th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE Communications surveys and tutorials 2018-01, Vol.20 (4), p.2804-2821
Main Authors: Khuwaja, Aziz Altaf, Chen, Yunfei, Zhao, Nan, Alouini, Mohamed-Slim, Dobbins, Paul
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aerodynamics
Airframes
Antenna measurements
Atmospheric modeling
Channel characterization
channel models
Channels
Design optimization
Fading channels
Frequency measurement
Low altitude
measurement campaigns
Measurement methods
Military applications
Military communications
Modelling
Narrowband
Tutorials
UAV communication
Unmanned aerial vehicles
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Summary:Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have attracted great interest in rapid deployment for both civil and military applications. UAV communication has its own distinctive channel characteristics compared to the widely used cellular or satellite systems. Accurate channel characterization is crucial for the performance optimization and design of efficient UAV communication. However, several challenges exist in UAV channel modeling. For example, the propagation characteristics of UAV channels are under explored for spatial and temporal variations in non-stationary channels. Additionally, airframe shadowing has not yet been investigated for small size rotary UAVs. This paper provides an extensive survey of the measurement methods proposed for UAV channel modeling that use low altitude platforms and discusses various channel characterization efforts. We also review from a contemporary perspective of UAV channel modeling approaches, and outline future research challenges in this domain.
ISSN:1553-877X
1553-877X
2373-745X
DOI:10.1109/COMST.2018.2856587