Base Station Antenna Uptilt Optimization for Cellular-Connected Drone Corridors

Reliable wireless coverage in drone corridors is critical to enable a connected, safe, and secure airspace. To support beyond-visual-line-of-sight operations of aerial vehicles in a drone corridor, cellular base stations (BSs) can serve as a convenient infrastructure as they are widely deployed to provide seamless wireless coverage. However, antennas in the existing cellular networks are downtilted to optimally serve their ground users, which results in coverage holes at higher altitudes when they are used to serve drones. In this article, we consider the use of additional uptilted antennas at each cellular BS and optimize the uptilt angle to maximize the wireless coverage probability across a given drone corridor. Through numerical results, we characterize the optimal value of the antenna uptilt angle for a given antenna pattern as well as the minimum/maximum altitudes of the drone corridor.