Simulation-Based Performance Analysis of UAV-to-UAV Communications in a Realistic Urban Landscape Considering 3D Blockage Effects

This paper analyzes the impacts of realistic blockage effects by buildings for the packet reception ratio (PRR) in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-to-UAV communications (U2U). The key idea is to generate buildings based on real-world data on an urban landscape, i.e., more mixed and inhomogeneous building profiles than the existing mathematical models, to simulate the PRR stochastically. This key idea enables us to capture the impact of such inhomogeneous blockage profiles on line-of-sight conditions in a communication link between target UAVs and interference links from other UAVs, providing a key trade-off in the PRR. Our simulation results highlight this trade-off as the number of UAVs and UAV heights change. The results also illustrate how the inhomogeneous building profiles affect the PRR in each sub-region of the urban landscape under study. Our findings have important implications for U2U in real-world urban areas by using realistic building models and performing a joint analysis on the number of UAVs and their operating height across different sub-regions within the urban area of interest.