On the impact of inter-UAV communications interference in the 2.4 GHz band

Abstract

As the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) increases, protocols to avoid collisions between them, and to achieve collaboration through swarm-based configurations, are receiving more attention by the research community. In this work we study the performance of communication links between drones in the 2.4 GHz wireless band, where a high interference from the radio control unit is expected. We performed a large set of experimental tests, and the results demonstrate that the use of the WiFi 2.4 GHz band for any application is not compatible with overwhelming majority of remote controls working in the same frequency band. Moreover, the distance between drones, the data packet size, and the engines speed are also factors affecting the communications link quality.