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Beam Alignment for High-Speed UAV via Angle Prediction and Adaptive Beam Coverage | IEEE Journals & Magazine | IEEE Xplore

Beam Alignment for High-Speed UAV via Angle Prediction and Adaptive Beam Coverage

Publisher: IEEE

Abstract:

In unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communications, continuing beamforming along with the movement of the UAV to mitigate the severe path loss is indispensable, which is cal...View more

Abstract:

In unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communications, continuing beamforming along with the movement of the UAV to mitigate the severe path loss is indispensable, which is called beam tracking. The conventional beam tracking studies focus on tracking the angle resulting from the movement of a target and obtaining the maximum beamforming gain with a narrow beam through phased array-based beamforming. However, the high mobility and perturbation of UAV impose a challenge on aligning narrow beams between the base node and the UAV node in the aerial network. In particular, the spatial angular velocity is significantly high in the field of view (FoV) of antenna array. In this article, we propose a scheme that predicts the spatial angle of the moving object in the next time unit 1 and design a wide beam pattern based on the predicted value to reduce the beam misalignment issue. The proposed scheme can establish a robust communication link with the reduced packet loss, by mitigating the variations resulting from angle transition during a time unit, prediction errors, and the angle process noise. Especially, Gaussian process regression (GPR)-based spatial angle prediction method can predict spatial angle for the next time unit, with lower overhead than conventional methods. Considering the fact that UAVs typically travel at speeds from \boldsymbol{40} to \boldsymbol{160} [km/hr], we verify the simulation results in high-speed scenario such as from \boldsymbol{170} to \boldsymbol{200} [km/hr]. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme reduces the alignment error while maintaining sufficient signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) condition required for vehicular communication.
Published in: IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology ( Volume: 70, Issue: 10, October 2021)
Page(s): 10185 - 10192
Date of Publication: 12 August 2021

ISSN Information:

Publisher: IEEE

Funding Agency:


I. Introduction

The demand of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) service market, such as air taxi and drone cargo delivery, is expected to grow explosively, and UAV communication is envisioned as an essential factor in the upcoming

We here mean the time unit as a frame in a certain communication system such as 5G/LTE cellular standards, or a packet in IEEE 802.11 standard.

aerial network [1]. UAVs/drones have attractive elements due to flexible deployment, movement, and high line-of-sight (LOS) probability. Thus they can be highly utilized as base stations, users, and relays in communication systems. For UAVs to play a role in the communication network, they need to provide a stable link through directional beamforming based on the large-sized antenna array to build connectivity with a UAV at a relatively long distance. Therefore, the transceiver must steer the directional beam along the movement path of the UAV, and this is called beam tracking [2], [3]. Especially, the transceiver based on a massive antenna array can implement a narrow beam with high directivity mitigating severe path loss in the millimeter-wave band [4], [5]. A narrow beam can increase SNR performance through a high beamforming gain. However, the communication link secured by the narrow beam is vulnerable to movement and perturbation of the UAV [6]. In addition, if maximizing the transmission rate is not the primary goal, it may be more practical to establish a stable link that does not cause packet loss with a small overhead while satisfying the minimum transmission rate.

References

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