Invited: Channel Characterization for Unmanned Aircraft Systems

David W. Matolak

University of South Carolina, USA

Abstract

Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, or by the misnomer “drones,” are seeing explosive growth, and this growth is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. Hence numerous entities are involved with research, design, and testing to ensure safe and reliable UAS operation in the worldwide airspace. Since many UAS will be small and highly maneuverable, air-ground channel conditions will differ from—and often be more challenging than—those of traditional piloted aircraft, where ground sites are in open areas with tall antenna towers. Thus new research is required to accurately characterize the air-ground channel. We briefly review the history of study on the air-ground channel, then describe motivations for accurate air-ground channel characterization and modeling. We provide example air-ground channel measurement results from our work with NASA, discuss initial air-ground channel models, and future work.

CV

David W. Matolak received the B.S. degree from Penn. State, M.S. degree from Univ. of Massachusetts, and Ph.D. degree from the Univ. of Virginia, all in electrical engineering. He has over 20 years of experience in communication system research, development, design, and deployment, with private companies, government institutions, and academia, including AT&T Bell Labs, L3 Communication Systems, MITRE, and Lockheed Martin. He has over one hundred publications, eight patents, and expertise in wireless channel characterization, spread spectrum, ad hoc networking, and their application in civil and military terrestrial, aeronautical, and satellite communication systems. He was with Ohio University from 1999-2012, and is now with the University of South Carolina. His research interests are radio channel modeling and communication techniques for non-stationary fading channels, multicarrier transmission, and mobile ad hoc networks.