Reliability of Wi-Fi, LTE, and 5G-Based UAV RC Links in ISM Bands: Uplink Interference Asymmetry Analysis and HARQ Design

TL;DR

This paper investigates interference asymmetry in UAV RC links operating in ISM bands, analyzing how uplink interference affects downlink throughput and evaluating HARQ mechanisms through empirical measurements and performance modeling.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence of uplink interference asymmetry in UAV ISM band links and evaluates HARQ strategies to mitigate its impact on throughput.

Findings

Uplink interference can be up to 16.66 dB higher at 170 m altitude.

Asymmetric UL interference degrades DL throughput due to lost HARQ ACK/NACK signals.

Different HARQ mechanisms have varying effectiveness in mitigating interference effects.

Abstract

Command and control of uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) is often realized through air-to-ground (A2G) remote control (RC) links that operate in ISM bands. While wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) technology is commonly used for UAV RC links, ISM-based long-term evolution (LTE) and fifth-generation (5G) technologies have also been recently considered for the same purpose. A major problem for UAV RC links in the ISM bands is that other types of interference sources, such as legacy Wi-Fi and Bluetooth transmissions, may degrade the link quality. Such interference problems are a higher concern for the UAV in the air than the RC unit on the ground due to the UAV being in line-of-sight (LoS) with a larger number of interference sources. To obtain empirical evidence of the asymmetric interference conditions in downlink (DL) and uplink (UL), we first conducted a measurement campaign using a helikite platform in urban and rural areas at NC State University. The results from this measurement campaign show that the aggregate interference can be up to 16.66 dB at higher altitudes up to 170 m, compared with the interference observed at a ground receiver. As a result of this asymmetric UL interference, lost hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) indicators (ACK/NACK) in the UL may degrade the DL throughput. To investigate this, we study various HARQ mechanisms, including HARQ Type-I with no combining, HARQ Type-I with chase combining, HARQ Type-III with incremental redundancy, and burst transmission with chase combining. To evaluate the impact of asymmetric UL interference on throughput performance, we consider three steps of evaluation process: 1) standalone physical DL shared channel (PDSCH) throughput evaluation with perfect ACK/NACK assumption; 2) standalone physical UL control channel (PUCCH) decoding reliability evaluation; and 3) PDSCH DL throughput evaluation with asymmetric UL ACK/NACK transmission.