UAV communications with millimeter-wave beamforming: Potentials, scenarios, and challenges

Zhenyu Xiao*, Lipeng Zhu*, Xiang Gen Xia

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

98 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has been widely used in many fields and is arousing global attention. As the resolution of the equipped sensors in the UAV becomes higher and the tasks become more complicated, much higher data rate and longer communication range are required in the foreseeable future. As the millimeter-wave (mmWave) band can provide more abundant frequency resources than the microwave band, much higher achievable rate can be guaranteed to support UAV services such as video surveillance, hotspot coverage, and emergency communications, etc. The flexible mmWave beamforming can be used to overcome the high path loss caused by the long propagation distance. In this paper, we study three typical application scenarios for mmWave-UAV communications, namely communication terminal, access point, and backbone link. We present several key enabling techniques for UAV communications, including beam tracking, multi-beam forming, joint Tx/Rx beam alignment, and full-duplex relay techniques. We show the coupling relation between mmWave beamforming and UAV positioning for mmWave-UAV communications. Lastly, we summarize the challenges and research directions of mmWave-UAV communications in detail.

Original languageEnglish
Article number9205984
Pages (from-to)147-166
Number of pages20
JournalChina Communications
Volume17
Issue number9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2020
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • beam tracking
  • beamforming
  • deployment
  • millimeter-wave (mmWave) communications
  • unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)

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