The use of unmanned aerial systems (UAS), also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), has grown dramatically in recent years, and this growth is expected to continue. For safe operation, accurate knowledge of the air-ground wireless channels that such vehicles incur for communication is critical. Over the past few months, we have worked on a project under the University of South Carolina’s Wireless Science and Engineering Lab (WiSEL). Supported by the University of South Carolina’s Office of Undergraduate Research’s Magellan Program, as well as the Honors College, we have been working on a project entitled Measurement and Modeling of Low-Altitude Air-Ground Channels in Two Frequency Bands. In this paper, we quantify some of the key characteristics of air-to-ground wireless channels for low-altitude UAS, extending other recent work of the WiSEL that has been supported by NASA. In this paper, we report on the five tasks of this project. First, we review the state of research in channel modeling for low altitude UAS, and the implications this field of research has in the future development of UAS. We then describe the transmission and reception scheme we have developed with software-defined radios utilizing relatively wideband chirp signals for use in the L-Band (1-2 GHz) and C-Band (4-8 GHz). Our third task is the laboratory functional testing before the key fourth task of actual flight tests with a small UAS (i.e., drone) in near-urban environments. Our air-ground channel model development follows the collection of flight test data. In this paper, results from the series of lab and flight tests will be presented. The paper will also summarize the impact of this undergraduate research, as well as future directions.
Measurement and Modeling of Low-Altitude Air-Ground Channels in Two Frequency Bands
05.04.2022
2107099 byte
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
Altitude Measurement Capability as Related to Altitude Measurement Performance
SAE Technical Papers | 1990
|