Exploring the Interplay of Interference and Queues in Unlicensed Spectrum Bands for UAV Networks

TL;DR

This paper develops an analytical framework to analyze how interference and queue management affect UAV communication performance in unlicensed spectrum, providing insights into packet loss and throughput under various interference conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive analytical model that captures the effects of interference and queue dynamics on UAV network performance in unlicensed bands.

Findings

Packet drop probabilities are derived in closed form.

Interference and queue effects significantly impact throughput.

Optimal channel fading threshold balances packet loss and interference.

Abstract

In this paper, we present an analytical framework to explore the interplay of signal interference and transmission queue management, and their impacts on the performance of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) when operating in the unlicensed spectrum bands. In particular, we develop a comprehensive framework to investigate the impact of other interference links on the UAV as it communicates with the ground users. To this end, we provide closed-form expressions for packet drop probabilities in the queue due to buffer overflow or large queuing delay, which are expressed in terms of a transmission policy as a function of the channel fading threshold $\beta$. The overall packet loss caused either by interference signals or queuing packet drop is obtained, which, in turn, yields in obtaining the expected throughput performance. Through extensive numerical results, we investigate the impact of the channel fading threshold $\beta$, which plays an important role in balancing the trade-offs between packet loss due to queue drop or transmission error due to large interference levels.