Machine learning based altitude-dependent empirical LoS probability model for air-to-ground communications

Abstract

Line-of-sight (LoS) probability prediction is critical to the performance optimization of wireless communication systems. However, it is challenging to predict the LoS probability of air-to-ground (A2G) communication scenarios, because the altitude of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or other aircraft varies from dozens of meters to several kilometers. This paper presents an altitude-dependent empirical LoS probability model for A2G scenarios. Before estimating the model parameters, we design a K-nearest neighbor (KNN) based strategy to classify LoS and non-LoS (NLoS) paths. Then, a two-layer back propagation neural network (BPNN) based parameter estimation method is developed to build the relationship between every model parameter and the UAV altitude. Simulation results show that the results obtained using our proposed model has good consistency with the ray tracing (RT) data, the measurement data, and the results obtained using the standard models. Our model can also provide wider applicable altitudes than other LoS probability models, and thus can be applied to different altitudes under various A2G scenarios.