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Accessing From The Sky: A Tutorial on UAV Communications for 5G and Beyond

arXiv 1903.05289 ↗First posted 13 Mar 2019eess.SP cs.IT math.ITcited by 27

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Abstract (arXiv)

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have found numerous applications and are expected to bring fertile business opportunities in the next decade. Among various enabling technologies for UAVs, wireless communication is essential and has drawn significantly growing attention in recent years. Compared to the conventional terrestrial communications, UAVs' communications face new challenges due to their high altitude above the ground and great flexibility of movement in the three-dimensional (3D) space. Several critical issues arise, including the line-of-sight (LoS) dominant UAV-ground channels and resultant strong aerial-terrestrial network interference, the distinct communication quality of service (QoS) requirements for UAV control messages versus payload data, the stringent constraints imposed by the size, weight and power (SWAP) limitations of UAVs, as well as the exploitation of the new design degree of freedom (DoF) brought by the highly controllable 3D UAV mobility. In this paper, we give a tutorial overview of the recent advances in UAV communications to address the above issues, with an emphasis on how to integrate UAVs into the forthcoming fifth-generation (5G) and future cellular networks. In particular, we partition our discussions into two promising research and application frameworks of UAV communications, namely UAV-assisted wireless communications and cellular-connected UAVs,where UAVs serve as aerial communication platforms and users, respectively. Furthermore, we point out promising directions for future research and investigation.

Key facts. Cited by 27 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 13 Mar 2019.

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Citing papers per year: 2021: 6; 2022: 4; 2023: 4; 2024: 1; 2025: 8; 2026: 4.

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  1. 2021Edge Artificial Intelligence for 6G: Vision, Enabling Technologies, and Applicationscited by 96
  2. 2022Machine Learning-Aided Operations and Communications of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: A Contemporary Surveycited by 27
  3. 2025UAVs Meet Agentic AI: A Multidomain Survey of Autonomous Aerial Intelligence and Agentic UAVscited by 13
  4. 2022Cooperative Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning for Reliable and Energy-Efficient Mobile Access via Multi-UAV Controlcited by 5
  5. 2021Jamming-Resilient Path Planning for Multiple UAVs via Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 3
  6. 2021Learning-Based UAV Trajectory Optimization with Collision Avoidance and Connectivity Constraintscited by 3
  7. 2025Joint Resource Management for Energy-efficient UAV-assisted SWIPT-MEC: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Approachcited by 3
  8. 2022Deep Reinforcement Learning for Task Offloading in UAV-Aided Smart Farm Networkscited by 2
  9. 2021Efficient UAV Trajectory-Planning using Economic Reinforcement Learningcited by 1
  10. 2021Model-aided Deep Reinforcement Learning for Sample-efficient UAV Trajectory Design in IoT Networkscited by 1
  11. 2023Energy-Efficient Cellular-Connected UAV Swarm Control Optimizationcited by 1
  12. 2023Physics-Based Trajectory Design for Cellular-Connected UAV in Rainy Environments Based on Deep Reinforcement Learningcited by 1
15 more
  1. 2023Towards Scalable Wireless Federated Learning: Challenges and Solutionscited by 1
  2. 2023Spatial Deep Learning for Site-Specific Movement Optimization of Aerial Base Stationscited by 1
  3. 20253D Dynamic Radio Map Prediction Using Vision Transformers for Low-Altitude Wireless Networkscited by 1
  4. 2026Expert Routing for Communication-Efficient MoE via Finite Expert Bankscited by 1
  5. 2021Distributed Deep Reinforcement Learning for Intelligent Traffic Monitoring with a Team of Aerial Robotscited by 0
  6. 2022Autonomous Resource Management in Construction Companies Using Deep Reinforcement Learning Based on IoTcited by 0
  7. 2024ARDDQN: Attention Recurrent Double Deep Q-Network for UAV Coverage Path Planning and Data Harvestingcited by 0
  8. 2025Handover and SINR-Aware Path Optimization in 5G-UAV mmWave Communication using DRLcited by 0
  9. 2025GPS-Aided Deep Learning for Beam Prediction and Tracking in UAV mmWave Communicationcited by 0
  10. 2025Integrated Communication and Control for Energy-Efficient UAV Swarms: A Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Approachcited by 0
  11. 2025PIKAN: Physics-Inspired Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks for Explainable UAV Channel Modellingcited by 0
  12. 2025QoS-Aware Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning for Joint Link Selection and Trajectory Optimization in SAGIN-Supported UAV Mobility Managementcited by 0
  13. 2026Arm2Air: Cross-Embodiment Skeleton Transfer for 3D Relay Formationcited by 0
  14. 2026WONDER: A Radio World Model-based Negotiation Framework for Multi-Agent UAV Coverage Optimizationcited by 0
  15. 2026The Operable Pareto Front: Distilling Offline Search into Run-Time Control for Multi-Objective UAV Edge-Computing Schedulingcited by 0