Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Communications: Path-Loss Modeling and Evaluation

Channel modeling plays an important role in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication system design and performance evaluation. In this article, we provide a brief review of the existing UAV channel modeling, emphasizing that UAV altitude is a significant factor in characterizing large-scale fading modeling. We then investigate the effect of UAV altitude on the system-level performance of various networks. Simulation results are provided to show the behavior of cellular-connected UAV networks with different channel models and conditions. In addition, we show that antenna design significantly affects system performance. (Table 1 summarizes the abbreviations used in the article.)