LTE Mobile Network Technical Feasibility for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle BVLOS operations in a Rural Test Area

The Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology for the terrestrial area allows command and control and payload communications between drone and ground station in real-time and beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) conditions. However, aerial coverage, interference elimination, and network latency require further study, because mobile networks for Command and Control (C2) links are not yet generally accepted in drone operations by Civil Aviation Authorities (CAAs). This study focused on one rural test area in South-Eastern Finland. Commercial cellular operators were used, from which LTE network coverage maps of one operator in the area were used as the basis for the study. Several Unmanned Aerial Vehicle UAV flights were made, and LTE connection measurement results were obtained using the operator’s systems and own testing equipment and systems. Nothing unusual occurred in the test flights, which were made in a strong LTE field, and the Command and Control (C2) connection worked well. However, the terminal could have performed better in an area with poor LTE field strength when only one LTE User Equipment (UE) was used. But the data transfer worked very reliably when using a connection with several parallel cellular network connections on at the same time at the poor coverage area. This article shows that it is possible for any BVLOS operation to use the cellular network for the low-capacity Command and Control (C2) link if the operation area is covered by several LTE network operators and the terminal equipment allows the use of parallel connections.