Drone delivery: Reliable Cellular UAV Communication Using Multi-Operator Diversity

TL;DR

This paper proposes equipping UAVs with multiple cellular modems to improve communication reliability for drone delivery, achieving higher coverage and fewer handovers without infrastructure changes.

Contribution

Introducing a multi-operator diversity approach for UAVs that significantly enhances cellular communication reliability in urban environments.

Findings

98% coverage probability at 100m altitude with multiple modems

Outage zones are up to ten times smaller

Harmful handovers are eliminated

Abstract

The market size of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs, a.k.a drones) can reach up to 10% of the global market value. In particular, drone delivery is one of the most attractive applications. The growing number of drones requires appropriate traffic management systems that will rely on cellular networks. However, it has been shown in the literature that these networks cannot provide reliable communication due to low coverage probability and frequent handovers. This article presents a potential solution targeting these problems while requiring no modifications of the existing infrastructure. Namely, equipping the UAV with multiple cellular modems to connect to different providers' networks introduces network diversity resulting in 98% coverage probability at the flight altitude of 100 meters. In contrast, one network ensures only 80% coverage. At the same time, the size of the outage zones becomes up to ten times smaller and the frequency of harmful handovers is reduced to zero. The results are obtained with a physical-layer simulator utilizing a real urban 3D environment, cellular network parameters (e.g., site locations, antenna orientation and gains), and specific aerial channel models.