Coverage evaluation of wireless networks for Unmanned Aerial Systems

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) gained a lot popularity during the last years and are used in many applications ranging from reconnaissance over disaster recovery to remote sensing. In most applications some sort of communication link is needed to transmit telemetry and payload data. Especially for homeland security and civil operations the realization is sometimes very demanding due to missing radio frequencies. In order to overcome this constraint we investigate the usability of existing cellular networks. Considering these UAVs to communicate by means of cellular networks for establishing reliable air-to-ground links, claims an analysis and evaluation of the cellular channel characteristics in the low altitude operational area. In this paper we present a coverage analysis for cellular networks for altitudes up to 500 m based on aerial RSSI measurements.