Interference Mitigation Methods for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Served by Cellular Networks

TL;DR

This paper addresses interference issues in cellular networks caused by low altitude UAVs and proposes mitigation techniques to improve connectivity and reduce interference effects on terrestrial users.

Contribution

It introduces novel uplink and downlink interference mitigation methods specifically designed for UAVs in cellular networks.

Findings

Mitigation techniques reduce uplink throughput degradation for terrestrial UEs.

Proposed solutions enable UAVs to maintain LTE coverage in worst-case scenarios.

Methods effectively balance UAV connectivity with terrestrial network performance.

Abstract

A main challenge in providing connectivity to the low altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) through existing cellular network arises due to the increased interference in the network. The increased altitude and favourable propagation condition cause UAVs to generate more interference to the neighbouring cells, and at the same time experience more interference from the downlink transmissions of the neighbouring base stations. The uplink interference problem may result in terrestrial UEs having degraded performance, whereas the downlink interference problem may make it challenging for a UAV to maintain connection with the network. In this paper, we propose several uplink and downlink interference mitigation techniques to address these issues. The results indicate that the proposed solutions can reduce the uplink throughput degradation of terrestrial UEs and ensure UAVs to remain in LTE coverage under the worst case scenarios when all the base stations transmit at full power.