Investigation of Air-to-Air Channel Characteristics and a UAV Specific Extension to the Rice Model

One of the key challenges while operating multiple unmanned aerial systems (UAS) is to maintain reliable air-to-ground (A2G) and air-to-air (A2A) communication links. In previous works, the authors have introduced a communication-aware mobility behavior which takes communication constraints and overall mission goals into account. In order to further improve the mobility behavior with the help of a channel estimator, accurate models of the dynamic A2A channel are a necessity. In this work, we extend the Rice channel model to account for multipath effects introduced by the flight altitude of unmanned vehicles on an IEEE 802.11 communication link. Based on laboratory measurements and several experimental flights the influence on the channel is evaluated and exemplary model parameters are derived.