UWB Channel Sounding and Modeling for UAV Air-to-Ground Propagation Channels

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are expected to be used extensively in the near future in applications such as aerial surveillance, transportation, and disaster assistance. The conditions under which UAVs operate are different from those of conventional piloted aircrafts. This necessitates development of new air-to-ground (AG) propagation channel models for UAVs. To our best knowledge, there are limited studies in the literature on sounding and modeling of ultrawideband (UWB) AG propagation channels. In this work, comprehensive UWB measurements are conducted for various UAV communication scenarios using Time Domain P410 UWB kits. Both time and frequency domain analysis of the measured data are carried out. Based on the measured data, stochastic path loss and multipath channel models are developed to characterize AG UWB propagation channels.