Advances in Secure 5G Network for a Nationwide Drone Corridor
- Idaho National Laboratory
- North Carolina State University
Recent research has validated the proposal to add a separate set of antennas for 5G coverage in the air, while the conventional set of antennas continues to provide coverage on the ground, for a nationwide drone corridor for 5G cellular drones. More importantly, this drone corridor can be made secure and reliable by adapting the drone trajectories to avoid interference and security attacks, and with advanced precoding and physical layer security. Energy efficiency can also be improved with low-resolution massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems that utilize low resolution digital to analog converters. This paper describes additional research findings to further support the creation of this nationwide drone corridor. We design optimal drone trajectory within the drone corridor to improve safety for pedestrians and vehicles on the ground. We derive the optimum antenna uptilt angle to minimize outage probability for a given drone corridor. We also study the placement of intelligent reflector surfaces in an urban drone corridor in order to improve the multi-path scattering and hence the spatial multiplexing gains for serving drones. We calculate trajectories to maximize data rate in the presence of smart interference when drones are used as relays and each drone may be deployed in the paths of data flows from multiple BSs to multiple UEs. Next we demonstrate how the use of the additional set of antennas along with the 3GPP standard based subframe blanking method can minimize the interference from ground reflection of the radio frequency (RF) radiation from the downtilted antennas. The paper concludes with plans to continue with experimental studies to advance this work further.
- Research Organization:
- Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- LDRD; USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC07-05ID14517
- OSTI ID:
- 1885960
- Report Number(s):
- INL/CON-21-65310-Rev000
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English