We illustrate the potential of Massive MIMO for communication with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). We consider a scenario, where multiple single-antenna UAVs simultaneously communicate with a ground station (GS) equipped with a large number of antennas. Specifically, we discuss the achievable uplink (UAV to GS) capacity performance in the case of lineof-sight conditions. We develop a realistic geometric model, which incorporates an arbitrary orientation, of the GS and UAV antenna elements to characterize the polarization mismatch loss, which occurs due to the movement and orientation of the UAVs. A closed-form expression for a lower bound on the ergodic rate for a maximum-ratio combining receiver with estimated channel state information is derived. The optimal antenna spacing that maximizes the ergodic rate achieved by an UAV is also determined for uniform linear and rectangular arrays. It is shown that when the UAVs are spherically uniformly distributed around the GS, the ergodic rate per UAV is maximized for an antenna spacing equal to an integer multiple of one-half wavelength. Index Terms-Unmanned aerial vehicles, Massive MIMO, ergodic capacity.
In REF , the authors study the potential of employing the Massive MIMO technology for communications with drones.
Massive MIMO for Communications With Drone Swarms
IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications
IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications
Mathematics Computer Science