Radio Propagation Models in Wireless Networks of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Abstract

Although unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were mostly studied and used for military purposes before, they have become very popular recently for both civil uses, such as law enforcement and crop survey, and for potential commercial uses such as grocery delivery and Internet extension. Researchers investigating new networking protocols for UAV networks usually need the help of simulations to test their protocol designs, particularly when networks of large scales are desired in their tests. One choice that researchers need to make in the simulation of UAV networks is the radio propagation model for the air links. In this paper we compare the three radio propagation models that are available in the ns2 network simulation package and investigate if the choice of one particular model would have a significant impact on the simulation results for UAV networks.