5 research outputs found
Experimental evaluation of beamforming on UAVs in cellular systems
The usage of beamforming in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has the potential
of significantly improving the air-to-ground link quality. This paper presents
the outcome of experimental trial of such a UAV-based beamforming system over
live cellular networks. A testbed with directional antennas has been built for
the experiments. It is shown that beamforming can extend the signal coverage
due to antenna gain, as well as spatially reduce interference leading to higher
signal quality. Moreover, it has a positive impact on the mobility performance
of a flying UAV by reducing handover occurrences. It is also discussed, in
which situations beamforming should translate into the uplink throughput gain