A Survey on Millimeter-Wave Beamforming Enabled UAV Communications and Networking

2021/04/19 by Zhenyu Xiao, Xiao, Zhenyu, Lipeng Zhu +12 · 14 citations
Engineering · #Advanced Wireless Communication Technologies #Beamforming #Bottleneck #Communications system #Computer network #Computer science #Embedded system #Extremely high frequency #Millimeter-Wave Propagation and Modeling #Telecommunications #UAV Applications and Optimization #Wireless #eess.SP

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2104.09204

published in arXiv (Cornell University) (Cornell University) · Accepted by IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials

openalex publication_date 2021/04/19 · openalex created_date 2021/04/26 · arxiv created 2021/10/25 · arxiv updated 2021/10/26 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have found widespread commercial, civilian, and military applications. Wireless communication has always been one of the core technologies for UAV. However, the communication capacity is becoming a bottleneck for UAV to support more challenging application scenarios. The heavily-occupied sub-6 GHz frequency band is not sufficient to meet the ultra high-data-traffic requirements. The utilization of the millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequency bands is a promising direction for UAV communications, where large antenna arrays can be packed in a small area on the UAV to perform three-dimensional (3D) beamforming. On the other hand, UAVs serving as aerial access points or relays can significantly enhance the coverage and quality of service of the terrestrial mmWave cellular networks. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on mmWave beamforming enabled UAV communications and networking. The technical potential of and challenges for mmWave-UAV communications are presented first. Then, we provide an overview on relevant mmWave antenna structures and channel modeling. Subsequently, the technologies and solutions for UAV-connected mmWave cellular networks and mmWave-UAV ad hoc networks are reviewed, respectively. Finally, we present open issues and promising directions for future research in mmWave beamforming enabled UAV communications and networking.

Citations

• Software-Defined Networking: A Comprehensive Survey
• Multi-Beam UAV Communication in Cellular Uplink: Cooperative Interference Cancellation and Sum-Rate Maximization
• Distributed Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) for Data-Driven Millimeter Wave Communications in UAV Networks

Cited by

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• Integrated Sensing and Communication: Towards Multifunctional Perceptive Network
• RIS-Enabled UAV Communications and Sensing: Opportunities, Challenges, and Key Technologies
• Towed Movable Antenna (ToMA) Array for Ultra Secure Airborne Communications
• Transformer based Collaborative Reinforcement Learning for Fluid Antenna System (FAS)-enabled 3D UAV Positioning
• Secure Communication of UAV-mounted STAR-RIS under Phase Shift Errors
• Fluid Aerial Networks: UAV Rotation for Inter-Cell Interference Mitigation
• Can Movable Antenna-enabled Micro-Mobility Replace UAV-enabled Macro-Mobility? A Physical Layer Security Perspective
• GPS-Aided Deep Learning for Beam Prediction and Tracking in UAV mmWave Communication
• Ray Antenna Array Achieves Uniform Angular Resolution Cost-Effectively for Low-Altitude UAV Swarm ISAC
• Joint Topology and Power Optimization for Multi-UAV Collaborative Secure Communication

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