Blockage Modeling for Inter-layer UAVs Communications in Urban Environments

TL;DR

This paper investigates how urban buildings affect UAV communication links at different heights, modeling blockage behavior using stochastic geometry and Markov processes, with verified simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a stochastic model for UAV link blockage considering building effects and layer heights, including LOS probabilities and transition dynamics.

Findings

LOS probability relates to urban parameters and UAV height

Birth-death process models channel state transitions effectively

Transition rates depend on UAV layer heights

Abstract

The impact of buildings blockage on the UAVs communications in different UAVs heights is studied, when UAVs fly in a given rectangular urban area. This paper analyzes the properties of blockage behavior of communication links between UAVs from layers of different heights, including two main stochastic properties, namely the blockage (or LOS) probabilities, and the state transition models (birth-death process of LOS propagation). Based on stochastic geometry methods, the relation between LOS probability and the parameters of the region and the buildings is derived and verified with simulations. Furthermore, based on the simulations of the channel state transition process, we also find the birth-death process can be modeled as a distance continuous Markov process, and the transition rates are also extracted with their relation with the height of layers.