Conference Paper
Measuring Fixed Wing UAS Networks at Long Range
Start Date: 2020-06-15End Date: 2020-06-19
Event: DroNet 2020 - 6th ACM Workshop on Micro Aerial Vehicle Networks, Systems, and Applications
Event: Toronto, Canada
Lead Authors:
Russell Shirey
Sanjay Rao
Shreyas Sundaram
In recent years, we have seen significant growth in Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), or drones, with many applications involving extensive communication from the UAS to the ground (e.g., sensor data transmission from the UAS). Despite being a different, and significantly more challenging environment than traditional networks, there exists limited understanding of UAS networking today, and the implications for applications. In this work, we conduct a long range measurement study of modern UAS over a 2-day period collected from a fixed wing UAS system. We consider both directional and omnidirectional antennas operating with Tactical Radios at long range distances. We pay particular attention to the edge cases, where performance is more challenging. Our results provide insights into how the dynamic nature of flight, plane orientation with fixed wing UAS, and the variability of wireless networks, impacts network performance.