Performance Modeling and Analysis of Base Station Cooperation for Cellular-Connected UAV Networks

This paper studies the performance of base station (BS) cooperation for the downlink transmission of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in a cellular-connected UAV network. Performance models are derived for investigating the downlink transmission performance of a UAV with BS cooperation in terms of coverage probability and achievable throughput. In deriving the performance models, we consider two UAV distribution cases: general case and worst case, in which the locations of UAVs follow different distributions. Meanwhile, we introduce a light of sight (LoS) ball model to describe the LoS probability of the downlink channel between a BS and a UAV, and show that it has a good approximation to the ITU LoS model, and can largely simplify the derivation of the performance models. Monte Carlo simulation results are shown to validate the derived performance models. The impacts of major network parameters on the downlink transmission performance are investigated through numerical results. The performance models can be used to provide theoretical guidance for the design of a BS cooperation strategy.