Average Achievable Rate Analysis for Reliable Control in UAV-Based Short-Packet Communication Networks Average Achievable Rate Analysis

• Published in: Wireless personal communications Vol. 140; no. 1; pp. 333 - 351
• Main Authors: Minh Nam, Pham, Van Toan, Hoang, Hoang An, Ngo, Quang Sang, Nguyen, Trung Duy, Tran
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.01.2025
• Subjects: Communications Engineering; Computer Communication Networks; Engineering; Networks; Signal,Image and Speech Processing; Average achievable rate; Finite blocklength; Unmanned aerial vehicle; Short-packet communication
• ISSN: 0929-6212; 1572-834X
• DOI: 10.1007/s11277-024-11718-8

This paper studies an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) assisted short-packet communication (SPC) system, where a multi-antenna ground control station (GCS) transmits command and control signals to a UAV flying in a circular trajectory at a certain altitude. In particular, we focus on evaluating the fast and reliable transmission of the command and control information (CCI), which is one of important requirements in the UAV networks. Indeed, the SPC and maximal-ratio transmission are employed to send the CCI from the GCS to the UAV. Subject to a constraint of average block error rate, we first derive an closed-form expression of average achievable rate (AAR) for the considered system over Nakagami- m fading channel, where Line-of-Sight probability, large-scale fading and small-scale fading are considered. Then, to obtain insights into impact of the system parameters on the AAR performance, we derive a closed-form lower-bound expression of the AAR. Importantly, the lower-bound expression of AAR is valid for arbitrary fading severity parameter m . Moreover, we can determine the largest possible trajectory radius for the UAV at different altitudes, ensuring that the rate of the control signal to the UAV remains above a specified threshold.