The Impact of Multipath Propagation on Cooperative Traffic Conflict Detection among Drones

Drone-to-drone communications in urban airspace is likely to be severely influenced by multipath propagation due to numerous reflections off the ground surface, buildings, or other structures. In this contribution, we have a close look at its impact on a specific application, namely the cooperative detection of traffic conflicts through the periodic inter-drone exchange of beacon messages. To begin with, we propose a theoretical channel model for narrowband drone-to-drone communications incorporating a line-of-sight component, a ground multipath component, and Rician fading. Subsequently, we simulate the impact of the Rician K-factor and the drones' conflict altitude on the probability of detecting traffic conflicts. Especially, we show that low K-factors increase the probability of missing a detection up to 107 -times compared to a free space propagation scenario.