Cellular-Connected UAV: Potential, Challenges, and Promising Technologies

By Yong Zeng, Jiangbin Lyu, Rui Zhang. IEEE wireless communications, 2018

670 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Enabling high-rate, low-latency and ultra-reliable wireless communications between UAVs and their associated ground pilots/users is of paramount importance to realize their large-scale usage in the future. To achieve this goal, cellular- connected UAV, whereby UAVs for various applications are integrated into the cellular network as new aerial users, is a promising technology that has drawn significant attention recently. Compared to conventional cellular communication with terrestrial users, cellular-connected UAV communication possesses substantially different characteristics that present new research challenges as well as opportunities. In this article, we provide an overview of this emerging technology, by first discussing its potential benefits, unique communication and spectrum requirements, as well as new design considerations. We then introduce promising technologies to enable the future generation of 3D heterogeneous wireless networks with coexisting aerial and ground users. Last, we present simulation results to corroborate our discussions and highlight key directions for future research.

Subfields: Aerospace Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/58b435cfeed119f33815111e1ad1c6f9a44d9112

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Citations in the corpus

Cellular-Enabled UAV Communication: A Connectivity-Constrained Trajectory Optimization Perspective (2018, methodology): “for aerial interference mitigation were made in [16] and [28], where the potential of several techniques including 3D beam-”
IRS-Assisted Secure UAV Transmission via Joint Trajectory and Beamforming Design (2022, background): “On the other hand, integrating UAVs into cellular networks as aerial users is envisioned to yield signiﬁcant performance enhancement in network reliability and throughput [6].”
A Comprehensive Overview on 5G-and-Beyond Networks With UAVs: From Communications to Sensing and Intelligence (2020, background): “On the one hand, providing these services simultaneously for both UAVs and ground users imposes new technical challenges [8], [16]–[18].”
A Survey on Millimeter-Wave Beamforming Enabled UAV Communications and Networking (2021, methodology): “Recently, some research works have studied the application of mmWave lens array for UAV BSs to improve the communication service for UEs [77], [78], where the beam selection is one of the most important issues for UE coverage in the analog domain.”
Physical Layer Security in UAV Systems: Challenges and Opportunities (2019, neutral): “3D Beamforming: Compared to the traditional 2D beamforming, 3D beamforming can generate separated beams in the 3D space simultaneously to provide better service coverage [14].”
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs): A Survey on Civil Applications and Key Research Challenges (2018, positive): “Cellular-Connected UAVs is a promising technology that can become a reality in the near future [213].”
UAV Communications for 5G and Beyond: Recent Advances and Future Trends (2019, background): “On the other hand, UAVs can also be used as aerial nodes to enable a multitude of applications ranging from cargo delivery to surveillance, which is commonly referred to as cellularconnected UAVs [10], [11].”
UAV assistance paradigm: State-of-the-art in applications and challenges (2020, background): “The interference is a critical problem that signiﬁcantly impacts the communication between UAVs and ground entities, which becomes more severe by the dominated-LoS A2G channel when UAVs are hovering at high altitudes [84].”
Prospective Multiple Antenna Technologies for Beyond 5G (2019, background): “Hence, 3D beamforming is suitable for UAVs [184], [185].”
Accessing From the Sky: A Tutorial on UAV Communications for 5G and Beyond (2019, methodology): “First, based on the simulation results reported in [12], we illustrate some new considerations that deserve particular attention in designing and implementing cellularconnected UAV communications.”