On the Optimization of Cellular Networks for UAV Aerial Corridor Support

Cellular connected unmanned aerial vehicles (CCUAVs) are expected to enable new disruptive verticals with a significant impact on different business sectors. In particular, to enable connected and safe operations, the concept of drone corridors has recently received attention. In general, CCUAVs suffer from poor received signal strength, and they perceive large interference due to the high line-of-sight probability with the interfering sectors. In this paper, we propose an ADAM-based algorithm to optimize the electronic tilt of base stations deployed in an LTE network to improve the quality of service in predefined aerial corridors. Importantly, the numerical analysis results indicate that it is feasible to re-tune antenna sector directions to distribute, in an optimized manner, more power in the targeted corridors while minimizing interference, with a minimum impact for the ground, allowing usage of an already deployed LTE network for beyond line of sight (BLoS) communication.