Shadow Fading Spatial Correlation Analysis for Aerial Vehicles: Ray Tracing vs. Measurements

TLDR: The main goal of this paper is to study the feasibility of ray tracing models to accurately predict shadow fading variations at different heights, so that the shadow fading correlation distances for the UAV channel can be found in both vertical and horizontal directions, without the need of performing extensive field measurement campaigns.

Abstract: Although the use of cellular networks to serve drones has been investigated in several recent works, the path loss or shadowing variation is still relatively unexplored. The variation and its dynamic behaviour is of importance in characterizing the reliability of the drone communication link, but difficult to assess by experimental means on a large scale. The main goal of this paper is to study the feasibility of ray tracing models to accurately predict shadow fading variations at different heights, so that the shadow fading correlation distances for the UAV channel can be found in both vertical and horizontal directions, without the need of performing extensive field measurement campaigns. For that, predictions obtained through a ray tracing tool are compared to field measurements in an urban scenario. Our results show that with accurate 3D maps, the tool is useful for predicting the dynamics of the UAV propagation channel, and therefore can be used partly as a substitute for field measurements.