Empirical Path Loss Channel Characterization Based on Air-to-Air Ground Reflection Channel Modeling for UAV-Enabled Wireless Communications

The purpose of this work was to investigate the air-to-air channel model (A2A-CM) for unmanned aerial vehicle- (UAV-) enabled wireless communications. Specifically, a low-altitude small UAV needs to characterize the propagation mechanisms from ground reflection. In this paper, the empirical path loss channel characterizations of A2A ground reflection CM based on different scenarios were presented by comparing the wireless communication modules for UAVs. Two types of wireless communication modules both WiFi 2.4 GHz and LoRa 868 MHz frequency were deployed to study the path loss channel characterization between Tx-UAV and Rx-UAV. To investigate the path loss, three types of experimental channel models, such as CM1 grass floor, CM2 soil floor, and CM3 rubber floor, were considered under the ground reflection condition. The analytical A2A Two-Ray (A2AT-R) model and the modified Log-Distance model were simulated to compare the correlation with the measurement data. The measurement results in the CM3 rubber floor scenario showed the impact from the ground reflection at 1 m to 3 m Rx-UAV altitudes both 2.4 GHz and 868 MHz which was converged to the A2AT-R model and related to the modified Log-Distance model above 3 m. It clear that there is no ground reflection effect from the CM1 grass floor and CM2 soil floor. This work showed that the analytical A2AT-R model and the modified Log-Distance model can deploy to model the path loss of A2A-CM by using WiFi and LoRa wireless modules.