Mobility for Cellular-Connected UAVs: challenges for the network provider

TL;DR

This paper explores the challenges faced by network providers in integrating UAVs into 5G networks, focusing on coverage, handover, and neighbour relation issues, supported by analysis of standards, literature, and real-world data.

Contribution

It systematically classifies and analyzes the network planning and optimization challenges for UAV connectivity in 5G, proposing approaches to address these issues.

Findings

Coverage planning for flying users is complex and requires new strategies.

Handover management is critical due to frequent UAV mobility.

Neighbour relation table management impacts UAV connectivity stability.

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology is becoming more prevalent and more diverse in its application. 5G and beyond networks must enable UAV connectivity. This will require the network operator to consider this new type of user in the planning and operation of the network. This work presents the challenges an operator will encounter and should consider in the future as UAVs become users of the network. We analyse the 3GPP specifications, the existing research literature, and a publicly available UAV connectivity dataset, to describe the challenges. We classify these challenges into network planning and network optimisation categories. We discuss the challenge of planning network coverage when considering coverage for flying users and the PCI collision and confusion issues that can be aggravated by these users. In discussing network optimisation challenges, we introduce Automatic Neighbouring Relation (ANR) and handover challenges, specifically the number of neighbours in the Neighbour Relation Table (NRT), and their potential deletion and block-listing, the frequent number of handovers and the possibility that the UAV disconnects because of handover issues. We discuss possible approaches to address the presented challenges and use a real-world dataset to support our findings about these challenges and their importance.