A Survey on Millimeter-Wave Beamforming Enabled UAV Communications and Networking

Zhenyu Xiao, Lipeng Zhu*, Yanming Liu, Pengfei Yi, Rui Zhang, Xiang Gen Xia, Robert Schober

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

205 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have found widespread commercial, civilian, and military applications. Wireless communication has always been one of the core technologies for UAV. However, the communication capacity is becoming a bottleneck for UAV to support more challenging application scenarios. The heavily-occupied sub-6 GHz frequency band is not sufficient to meet the ultra high-data-traffic requirements. The utilization of the millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequency bands is a promising direction for UAV communications, where large antenna arrays can be packed in a small area on the UAV to perform three-dimensional (3D) beamforming. On the other hand, UAVs serving as aerial access points or relays can significantly enhance the coverage and quality of service of the terrestrial mmWave cellular networks. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on mmWave beamforming enabled UAV communications and networking. The technical potential of and challenges for mmWave-UAV communications are presented first. Then, we provide an overview on relevant mmWave antenna structures and channel modeling. Subsequently, the technologies and solutions for UAV-connected mmWave cellular networks and mmWave-UAV ad hoc networks are reviewed, respectively. Finally, we present open issues and promising directions for future research in mmWave beamforming enabled UAV communications and networking.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)557-610
Number of pages54
JournalIEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials
Volume24
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • UAV
  • UAV-connected mmWave cellular
  • ad hoc network
  • antenna structure
  • beamforming
  • channel modeling
  • mmWave communications

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