Impact of Mechanical and Electrical Tilting for Cellular-Connected Drones and Legacy Users

Abstract

Drones, also known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)s, have lately been employed for a variety of tasks in our daily lives, including surveillance, delivery, and rescue operations. High-performance, dependable two-way communication with cellular networks is necessary to expand UAV applications quickly. Supporting different UAVs into current fifth generation (5G) networks is challenging. One of these challenges comes from ground and aerial users having different channel properties. This thesis investigates how the performance of cellular-connected UAVs and legacy ground users in a cellular network can be improved by changing the antenna tilting angle or type, and we will consider mechanical, electrical, and hybrid tilting in the system. This study considers the case of single user Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (SU-MIMO) system featuring Uniform Linear Array (ULA) or Uniform Planar Array (UPA) antenna system with Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) parameters. This study illustrates the impact of antenna tilting in improving user throughput, making it easier to integrate UAVs into 5G and future networks. These conclusions are supported by simulation results, which also show how hybrid tilting may be used as a scalable way to enhance multi-user performance for next-generation networks.