Measurement-Based Channel Characteristics for Air-to-Ground Communications Under Rural Areas

As an important part of the beyond fifth generation (B5G) and sixth generation (6G) network, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication has been widely used in various application scenarios. The measurement and analysis of UAV air-to-ground (A2G) channel characteristics is vital to the design of future UAV communication systems. In this paper, we introduce a channel sounder that supports real-time measurements but has smaller data storage sizes. The developed channel sounder is used to carry out channel measurement campaigns in two typical rural scenarios, i.e., farmland and river. Based on the measurement data, some key channel characteristics, including multipath components (MPCs) and path loss (PL), are analyzed and compared. The results can provide a valuable reference for UAV channel modeling and UAV communication system design in rural areas.