TY - JOUR
T1 - A Survey of Channel Modeling for UAV Communications
AU - Khuwaja, Aziz Altaf
AU - Chen, Yunfei
AU - Zhao, Nan
AU - Alouini, Mohamed-Slim
AU - Dobbins, Paul
N1 - KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2020-10-01
Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank Dr Richard Staunton for reading our manuscript and correcting typographical errors.
PY - 2018/7/16
Y1 - 2018/7/16
N2 - Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have attracted great interest in rapid deployment for both civil and military applications. UAV communication has its own distinctive channel characteristics compared to the widely used cellular or satellite systems. Accurate channel characterization is crucial for the performance optimization and design of efficient UAV communication. However, several challenges exist in UAV channel modeling. For example, the propagation characteristics of UAV channels are under explored for spatial and temporal variations in non-stationary channels. Additionally, airframe shadowing has not yet been investigated for small size rotary UAVs. This paper provides an extensive survey of the measurement methods proposed for UAV channel modeling that use low altitude platforms and discusses various channel characterization efforts. We also review from a contemporary perspective of UAV channel modeling approaches, and outline future research challenges in this domain.
AB - Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have attracted great interest in rapid deployment for both civil and military applications. UAV communication has its own distinctive channel characteristics compared to the widely used cellular or satellite systems. Accurate channel characterization is crucial for the performance optimization and design of efficient UAV communication. However, several challenges exist in UAV channel modeling. For example, the propagation characteristics of UAV channels are under explored for spatial and temporal variations in non-stationary channels. Additionally, airframe shadowing has not yet been investigated for small size rotary UAVs. This paper provides an extensive survey of the measurement methods proposed for UAV channel modeling that use low altitude platforms and discusses various channel characterization efforts. We also review from a contemporary perspective of UAV channel modeling approaches, and outline future research challenges in this domain.
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10754/627000
UR - https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8411465
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85048230076&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/COMST.2018.2856587
DO - 10.1109/COMST.2018.2856587
M3 - Article
SN - 1553-877X
VL - 20
SP - 2804
EP - 2821
JO - IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials
JF - IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials
IS - 4
ER -