# Mobile Network Performance and Technical Feasibility of LTE-Powered Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
## 1 Introduction
The works described in [16; 28; 29] investigated the performance of drone cellular connectivity by performing field measurements. The articles analyzed the performance of drone connectivity in LTE/LTE-Advanced networks in terms of coverage, data-rate, interference, and latency. Although results show the capability of 4G networks for providing  
Figure 1: Illustration of wide-area wireless connectivity for a low-altitude drone with terrestrial cellular networks. communication links for low altitude drones, little work has yet been done to investigate the impact of HO, latency, coverage, and data rate of cellular-connected drones. In this regard, the goal of this article is to further shed light on the feasibility and challenges of utilizing the LTE network for providing BVLoS connectivity for drones. To this end, first an LTE-based cellular-connected drone prototype was developed for conducting field measurement. Then, a field trial measurement was performed to investigate the performance of drone connectivity at different altitudes in terms of \(RSRP\), reference signal received quality (\(RSRQ\)), data-rate, latency, and HO. The key contributions of this paper are summarized as follows:  
* An LTE-powered drone prototype was constructed based on the latest hardware and software available in the market. The developed drone prototype can handle less delayed video streaming, send a real-time location, and be fully controlled using the LTE mobile network remotely. The prototype design can guide future works in this area. * A field trial measurement was conducted in a commercial LTE network and suburban environment (university campus). For measurements, the state-of-the-art techniques were used and important parameters, such as \(RSRP\), \(RSRQ\), data rate, latency, and handover, were measured to evaluate the system performance. * Performance of the LTE system was analyzed according to the measured parameters and large-scale pathloss channel model. To investigate the feasibility of LTE connectivity for low altitude small drones, the system performance was compared with the requirements established by 3 GPP. In addition, the technical challenges of utilizing the current industrial 4G technology for providing BVLoS operations for drones were revealed. Finally, several future works and potential solutions were presented to overcome the challenges and improve the LTE connectivity performance. * The drone power consumption was studied and the main power consuming parts were revealed. The results can be used as guidance to improve energy efficiency and drone flight time for future works. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the methodology during the drone prototype development using an LTE mobile network-based control system and all the methods used during the field test to assess network performance. Section 3 presents the channel model and large-scale pathloss characteristics of the communications channel between eNodeB and drones. Section 4 discusses the results obtained, which show how good the network performance is by comparing a few altitudes with ground level as a benchmark. This section also discusses \(RSRP\) and \(RSRQ\) values obtained that result in HO procedure, and data rates and delays experienced by the UE at different altitudes. The last part of this section discusses the power consumption by the new system and how it will affect drone performance in many aspects, such as flight time and drone speed. Section 5 highlights practical challenges of utilizing the LTE network for providing BVLoS connectivity for drones and addresses some potential solutions to overcome the challenges. Finally, Section 6 concludes the paper.