How can I estimate the propagation loss between an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or drone, and user equipment (UE) on the ground? is it safe to assume a line-of-sight scenario? how about the drone's altitude? is there a specific air-to-ground formula I can use?
Hi Manuel Eugenio Morocho-Cayamcela
To the best of my knowledge, the path loss formula for a drone-to-ground communication will critically depend on the application or purpose for which your UAV or drone system is deployed. In other words, the path loss model will be different for the UAV systems used for telecommunications relaying, sensor data collection for IoT applications, commercial aerial surveillance, emergency search-and-rescue, traffic monitoring etc.
Further, I would like to mention the fact that the assumption of LOS between UAV and UE won't be practical because of many parameters (like tall buildings, shadowing) and scenarios (e.g. urban, suburban area). I will suggest you consider the impact of these things (like shadowing severity) while you analyze your system rather assuming LOS communication.
Finally, I would like to tell you that yes, the path loss exponent varies according to the hight of UE and UAV. Empirical measurements in "Trading off propagation benefits with interference costs for aerial nodes" suggest that there is a clearance of the radio path, obtained with higher UE heights, reduces the shadowing variation while it increases the received signal power from the interfering cells and the number of visible neighbouring cells. So yes, drone's altitude will have an impact on it.
I will personally recommend you go through these enlisted best readings (first two especially). They will clarify your concerns.
Article Modeling Cellular-to-UAV Path-Loss for Suburban Environments
Conference Paper A Study on Path Loss Model for UAV Based Urban Disaster and ...
I hope this will be helpful to you in some way.
Cheers!
Dear,
You can use the free space path loss formula in the case of Los case.
At my opinion and just for path loss, the line of sight formula 20log(f) + 20 log (d) +32.44 it will be good enough. But, just for path loss with the drone most of the time with optical view. If it fly between buildings most of the time, probably will need a different and non deterministic model.
There are other processes in the link, the more important is multipath. But I believe that to answer your question about path loss, the well known formula of free space attenuation is correct.
https://www.researchgate.net/project/Localization-and-clustering-for-UAV-networks
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