Verification of Standardized Rel-15 Requirements for Drone’s Command-and-Control Link Reliability

In this paper, we present the results which aim to practically scrutinize the stringent requirements of the 3GPP TR 36.777 for drone’s command-and-control link reliability of 99.9% and the maximum one-way air interface delay of 50 ms. To verify whether the requirements are reachable, we conduct comprehensive field trial measurements in a densely populated urban area, in Vienna, Austria, where the drone flies at altitudes of up to 120 m on operational LTE network. Our results show that there is an over-expectation in the requirements under current network conditions.