Enabling drone communications with WiMAX Technology

With the popularity of winter tourism, the winter recreation activities have been increased day by day in alpine environments. However, large numbers of people and rescuers are injured and lost in this environment due to the avalanche accidents every year. Drone-based rescue systems are envisioned as a viable solution for saving lives in this hostile environment. To this aim, a European project named “Smart collaboration between Humans and ground-aErial Robots for imProving rescuing activities in Alpine environments (SHERPA)” has been launched with the objective to develop a mixed ground and aerial drone platform to support search and rescue activities in a real-world hostile scenarios. In this paper, we study the challenges of existing wireless technologies for enabling drone wireless communications in alpine environment. We extensively discuss about the positive and negative aspects of the standards according to the SHERPA network requirements. Then based on that, we choose Worldwide interoperability for Microwave Access network (WiMAX) as a suitable technology for drone communications in this environment. Finally, we present a brief discussion about the use of operating band for WiMAX and the implementation issues of SHERPA network. The outcomes of this research assist to achieve the goal of the SHERPA project.