A novel 3D non-stationary UAV-MIMO channel model and its statistical properties

The wireless communication systems based on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have found a wide range of applications recently. In this paper, we propose a new three-dimensional (3D) non-stationary multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel model for the communication links between the UAV and mobile terminal (MT). The new model originates the traditional geometry-based stochastic models (GBSMs) but considers the non-stationary propagation environment due to the rapid movements of the UAV, MT, and clusters. Meanwhile, the upgrade time evolving algorithms of time-variant channel parameters, i.e., the path number based on birth-death processes of clusters, path delays, path powers, and angles of arrival and departure, are developed and optimized. In addition, the statistical properties of proposed GBSM including autocorrelation function (ACF), cross-correlation function (CCF), and Doppler power spectrum density (DPSD) are investigated and analyzed. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed model provides a good agreement on the statistical properties with the corresponding derived theoretical ones, which indicates its usefulness for the performance evaluation and validation of the UAV based communication systems.