Modeling air-to-ground path loss for low altitude platforms in urban environments

TLDR

The reliable prediction of coverage footprints from airborne wireless base stations is crucial for emerging air‑to‑ground services, such as rapid recovery of damaged terrestrial infrastructure after natural disasters and handling sudden traffic overloads from large crowds. The study proposes a statistical propagation model to predict air‑to‑ground path loss between a low‑altitude platform and a terrestrial terminal. The model derives path loss from urban environment characteristics and the elevation angle, and the paper details the deduction methodology and presents distinct path loss profiles with their occurrence probabilities. The model identifies two main propagation groups, each with a distinct path loss profile.

Abstract

The reliable prediction of coverage footprint resulting from an airborne wireless radio base station, is at utmost importance, when it comes to the new emerging applications of air-to-ground wireless services. These applications include the rapid recovery of damaged terrestrial wireless infrastructure due to a natural disaster, as well as the fulfillment of sudden wireless traffic overload in certain spots due to massive movement of crowds. In this paper, we propose a statistical propagation model for predicting the air-to-ground path loss between a low altitude platform and a terrestrial terminal. The prediction is based on the urban environment properties, and is dependent on the elevation angle between the terminal and the platform. The model shows that air-to-ground path loss is following two main propagation groups, characterized by two different path loss profiles. In this paper we illustrate the methodology of which the model was deduced, as well as we present the different path loss profiles including the occurrence probability of each.