Interference Effects on Bandwidth Availability for UAV Communications

Ensuring a consistent and robust data connection to UAVs has become an increasingly critical aspect for safe and effective flight operations, especially with the recent exponential increase in use. Numerous studies have investigated the impact of interference on conventional communication technologies; however, there is a noticeable gap in research regarding the effects on UAV communication systems. This study addressed this research gap by conducting a comprehensive analysis of how unintentional interference affects the available bandwidth for Control and Command (C2) systems. Two evaluation metrics, Bit Error Rate (BER) and the in-phase and quadrature-phase (IQ) constellation diagrams, were used to analyze the effect of interference on the communication quality of C2 systems. This investigation focused on understanding how interference impacts transmitted signals, examining various parameters such as interference signal strength, signal overlap, and modulation schemes. The results demonstrate that interference substantially influences the accessible bandwidth and can result in a decline in overall communication quality. They also show that higher-order modulation schemes are notably vulnerable to the BER degradation induced by interference.