Terahertz Drone Communications Under Fog and Beam Misalignment

As researchers have recently explored its applicability, Terahertz (THz) drone communications will be integral to the upcoming Sixth-Generation (6G) non-terrestrial communications. This paper analyzes the impact of fog fading under beam (mis)alignment on outage probability and average bit error rate (BER) for THz Drone-to-Drone (D2D) communications. We consider state-of-the-art system parameters, and realistic communication distances (10-100) m, for drones. Moreover, we analyze the THz D2D communications at altitudes ranging from (100-1000) m since the fog effect usually exists at altitudes up to 1000 m. Numerical simulations reveal that the fading due to beam misalignment has a greater detrimental impact on the outage probability and average BER performance of the THz D2D communications when compared to the fading due to fog. Overall, this work emphasizes the need for precise alignment between the communicating drones to achieve high-reliability THz drone communications even under foggy environments.