Leveraging UAV Rotation To Increase Phase Coherency in Distributed Transmit Beamforming

Distributed transmit beamforming (DTBF) can allow a swarm of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to send a common message to a distant target. DTBF among N nodes can provide N
²
times the received power compared to a single node and can reduce interference by confining the signal in a certain direction. However, DTBF requires time, frequency, and phase synchronization. Here, we focus on the issue of phase incoherence at the distributed transmit nodes from two sources—different local oscillators (LOs) and hovering position movement—and how to counteract their impact at the receiver via local decisions, namely, rotation. To investigate how the UAV body and its rotation can affect phase coherency, we conduct controlled in-field experiments where we control the phase offset at two distributed antennas and measure the received signal level at four antenna positions on a drone for various rotation angles. We show that significant improvements can be achieved at the receiver through rotation. We also show that there exists an optimal combination of UAV rotation angle and antenna position on the drone to mitigate the effects of phase incoherence among the distributed transmitters. Finally, we demonstrate an interesting trade-off where, due to the heterogeneous nature of the UAV body, rotation angles that yield maximum beamforming gains might not result in the best average (or minimum) beamformed signal level across all possible phase errors at the distributed transmitters.