Channel modeling for low-altitude UAV in suburban environments based on ray tracer

摘要

Small and medium-size unmanned aircraft vehicles (UAVs) can only fly within short distance and ultra low altitude (<100m). It is of great interest to model the propagation in these conditions where there is an important influence of the environment. For the high cost of carrying out measurements and the safety concern, ray-tracing technique is considered to be a proper way for investigating the low altitude UAV channel. This paper presents simulation results based on ray tracing technique which simulates the air-to-ground (AG) channel of small UAVs at different heights in a realistic suburban scenario. Some parameters including path loss, K factor, number of paths, and delay spread are analyzed and show obvious height-dependency. During the ascending progress of the UAV, the multipath components diminish and finally only line of sight (LoS) component remains. The results and analysis can serve as a guidance for modeling ultra-low-altitude UAV channel.