Configurable Virtual MIMO via UAV Swarm:Channel Modeling and Spatial Correlation Analysis

作     者：Jiachen Qian Jue Wang Shi Jin Jiachen Qian;Jue Wang;Shi Jin

作者机构：National Mobile Communications Research LaboratorySoutheast UniversityNanjing 210096China School of Information Science and TechnologyNantong UniversityNantong 226109China Nantong Research Institute for Advanced Communication TechnologiesNantong 226109China 

出 版 物：《China Communications》 (中国通信（英文版）)

年 卷 期：2022年第19卷第9期

页      面：133-145页

核心收录：

学科分类：0810[工学-信息与通信工程] 08[工学] 0804[工学-仪器科学与技术] 080402[工学-测试计量技术及仪器] 082503[工学-航空宇航制造工程] 0825[工学-航空宇航科学与技术] 

基　　金：supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China(2018YFA0701602) the National Natural Science Foundation of China(NSFC)under Grants 61941104,61921004,62171240,61771264 the Key Research and Development Program of Shandong Province under Grant 2020CXGC010108。 

主　　题：UAV communications MIMO channel model spatical correlation 

摘      要：Air-to-ground wireless channel modeling for unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)communications has been widely studied.However,channel modeling for UAV swarm-enabled cooperative communication still needs investigation,where the impact of UAV positions on the spatial channel characteristics is of particular importance.In this paper,we consider a UAV swarm-enabled virtual multiple input multiple output(MIMO)system,where multiple single-antenna UAVs cooperatively transmit to multiple ground users(GUs).We establish a common coordinate system,as well as a UAV swarm-oriented coordinate system,to describe the relative positions of the GUs and the UAV elements,respectively.Based on the established coordinate systems,geometric ray superposition method is applied to describe the spatial channel matrix.The proposed modeling framework can be directly used to describe the line-of-sight and two-ray propagations,and can be extended for including more practical spatial features such as multipath scattering,inter-UAV blockage,and random UAV jittering,etc.Based on the proposed model,we further analyze the spatial correlation among the virtual MIMO links of GUs located at different positions.Via extensive simulations,we show that thanks to the flexible deployment of UAVs,the virtual MIMO array structure can be conveniently configured to get desired channel properties,such as the channel capacity,eigenvalue and condition number distribution,and spatial correlation distribution.This shows the possibility and importance of exploiting a new design dimension,i.e.,the UAV swarm pattern,in such cooperative virtual MIMO systems.