A New Spectrum Prediction Method for UAV Communications

With the increase of the number of aircrafts, spectrum resources are becoming more and more scarce, and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communications have been greatly affected. Cognitive radio (CR) technology can improve spectrum utilization and solve the problem of shortage of spectrum resources in the UAV communications. Due to the high speed of UAVs and the rapid changes in the spectrum environment, traditional spectrum prediction methods cannot be applied to the UAV communications. Based on the Hidden Markov Model (HMM) spectrum prediction and the Homotopy theory, this paper proposes a new spectrum prediction method that can be applied to the UAV communications. We use simulated data and experimental data to predict the spectrum status. The prediction results show that the new spectrum prediction method for UAV communications can work well even if there is no a-priori information of spectrum at most places of the UAV flight path.