Towards beyond Visual Line of Sight Piloting of UAVs with Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communication

In this paper, we propose a model for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operation for remote piloting of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which utilizes different technologies such as mobile edge computing and augmented reality. Ultra reliable low latency communication (URLLC) is a key service of 5G that enables safe BVLOS operation. Since message size of piloting signal is finite and communication channel is altitude dependent, we study reliability and latency under finite blocklength regime for different altitudes. In our numerical study, we find that for message sizes 30 and 50 bits, coded packet size, i.e., blocklength, should be in the range of 200 and 300 bits to enable BVLOS operation. We also found that minimum distance between UAVs to avoid any crash should be around 0.2 m for 15 m/s UAV speed and different altitudes ranging from 1.5 m to 120 m. According to our study, BVLOS operation of UAVs can be realized by URLLC by providing error probability in the vicinity of 10
^-3
, and latency on the order of milliseconds for downlink communication with blocklength of tens to hundred bits.