UAV Communications with Millimeter-Wave Beamforming:Potentials,Scenarios,and Challenges

摘要

Unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)has been widely used in many fields and is arousing global attention.As the resolution of the equipped sensors in the UAV becomes higher and the tasks become more complicated,much higher data rate and longer communication range are required in the foreseeable future.As the millimeter-wave(mm Wave)band can provide more abundant frequency resources than the microwave band,much higher achievable rate can be guaranteed to support UAV services such as video surveillance,hotspot coverage,and emergency communications,etc.The flexible mm Wave beamforming can be used to overcome the high path loss caused by the long propagation distance.In this paper,we study three typical application scenarios for mm Wave-UAV communications,namely communication terminal,access point,and backbone link.We present several key enabling techniques for UAV communications,including beam tracking,multi-beam forming,joint Tx/Rx beam alignment,and full-duplex relay techniques.We show the coupling relation between mm Wave beamforming and UAV positioning for mm Wave-UAV communications.Lastly,we summarize the challenges and research directions of mm Wave-UAV communications in detail.