Measurement Reporting Enhancement for 5G Cellular-Connected Aerial Vehicles

Measurement reporting is essential in every cellular network to guarantee the best radio resource management and performance to its users. The information in reports is mainly used to perform handovers and interference management between cells. In the case of cellular-connected UAVs, where the UAV impacts a high number of cells due to its flight height, measurement reporting becomes essential. However, applying the same reporting schemes used for terrestrial users, the UAV appears to generate a large number of reports, creating a substantial signalling overhead. To overcome this problem, we introduce in this paper a new measurement reporting scheme adapted for UAVs, which reduces the number of reports compared to LTE-supported aerial vehicles. Our scheme shows a 30% reduction in number of reports compared to LTE, without having a major impact on the network’s knowledge about the most relevant cells.