Measurement-Based Characterization and Modeling for Low-Altitude UAV Air-to-Air Channels

In this paper, we characterize the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) air-to-air (A2A) channel for an 802.11-based low altitude network based on a preliminary measuring result over user datagram protocol (UDP) throughput, latency, received signal strength indicator (RSSI), and pack loss, via various field experiments. Latency and pack loss are strongly related to the stability of flight; while the UDP throughput and RSSI shows a related variation trend in terms of the communication distance and altitude. A modified model based on the classical log-distance path loss (PL) model is introduced to describe propagation path loss, demonstrating the decreasing trend of multi-path effect and shadow fading with an increase in altitude. The simulation work is done to specifically show the characterization of A2A channels based on UAVs in short distance and low altitude environment.