A 3D Wideband Geometry-Based Stochastic Model for UAV Air-to-Ground Channels

Abstract

Air-to-ground (A2G) communication plays an important role in ensuring reliable communication links between unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and ground terminals. This paper presents a wideband truncated ellipsoidal shaped scattering region (TESR) geometry based stochastic model (GBSM) for Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) A2G channels. The proposed model contains a line-of-sight (LoS) component, a ground reflection component, and truncated ellipsoid scattering components. Based on the proposed GBSM, some important statistical properties like space-time-correlation-function (STCF) and Doppler power spectrum density (PSD) are derived. The impacts of elevation angle and UAV altitude on A2G channel characteristics are analyzed. Finally, excellent agreement is achieved between measurement data and simulation results of temporal auto correlation functions (ACFs), demonstrating applicability of the proposed model.