TY - GEN
T1 - Performance assessment of off-the-shelf mm wave radios for drone communications
AU - Bielsa, Guillermo
AU - Mezzavilla, Marco
AU - Widmer, Joerg
AU - Rangan, Sundeep
N1 - Funding Information:
ACKS This work is partially supported by the ERC grant CoG 617721 and the Region of Madrid through TAPIR-CM (S2018/TCS-4496). The work at NYU is partially supported by NIST Award 70NANB17H166, NSF Awards 1547332 and 1302336, as well as industrial affiliates of NYU Wireless and the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC). We also thank T. Clare, L. Soularue, M. Zhang, W. Xia and D. Shasha for their help with the platform and measurement campaign.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 IEEE.
PY - 2019/6
Y1 - 2019/6
N2 - This paper presents experiments to assess and understand the feasibility of millimeter-wave (mmWave) radios for aerial links at low altitude, namely drone communications. In this preliminary study, a Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) mm Wave radio is attached to a DJI Matrice 600 Pro drone. The measurement campaign reveals that while the technology is promising, the range is extremely limited, i.e., approximately 30m. Our analysis shows that the poor range is likely due to low-directionality of today's COTS devices as well as poor rate adaptation in mobile environments. More antennas at both the transmitter and the receiver, along with better 3D beamforming, will be essential to boosting the communication range and thus making this a viable technology for use cases such as high definition real-time monitoring in disaster response scenarios or rapid deployment of multi-Gbps aerial links to expand connectivity in underserved areas.
AB - This paper presents experiments to assess and understand the feasibility of millimeter-wave (mmWave) radios for aerial links at low altitude, namely drone communications. In this preliminary study, a Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) mm Wave radio is attached to a DJI Matrice 600 Pro drone. The measurement campaign reveals that while the technology is promising, the range is extremely limited, i.e., approximately 30m. Our analysis shows that the poor range is likely due to low-directionality of today's COTS devices as well as poor rate adaptation in mobile environments. More antennas at both the transmitter and the receiver, along with better 3D beamforming, will be essential to boosting the communication range and thus making this a viable technology for use cases such as high definition real-time monitoring in disaster response scenarios or rapid deployment of multi-Gbps aerial links to expand connectivity in underserved areas.
KW - 60GHz Networks
KW - 802.11ad
KW - Drone communications
KW - Millimeter-wave
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U2 - 10.1109/WoWMoM.2019.8793001
DO - 10.1109/WoWMoM.2019.8793001
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85071476985
T3 - 20th IEEE International Symposium on A World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks, WoWMoM 2019
BT - 20th IEEE International Symposium on A World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks, WoWMoM 2019
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 20th IEEE International Symposium on A World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks, WoWMoM 2019
Y2 - 10 June 2019 through 12 June 2019
ER -