Study of Air-to-Ground Communications Link for Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

The focus of the proposed project is on the development of an accurate communications channel model forsmall unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication to the ground station. The model will be based onseveral components including the Spatial Channel Model (SCM) of urban cellular systems, theoretic estimationof air-to-ground communication link parameters and practical channel measurements collected during fieldtesting of a baseline communications system mounted on a UAV. The obtained channel model will beimplemented in software and used to derive system design guidelines for UAV communication systems.