Performance evaluation of LTE and WiFi technologies in aerial networks

In recent times, aerial platforms have been investigated to provide wireless coverage to terrestrial radio terminals. The advantages of using aerial platforms to provide wireless coverage are many including larger coverage in remote areas, better line-of-sight conditions and resilience to certain natural disasters. In this context, we investigate the performance of using LTE and Wi-Fi technologies in aerial networks. More precisely, we consider a practical urban scenario from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia and perform ray-tracing simulations to characterize the path-loss of the air-to-ground channel. We then perform system-level simulations utilizing the channel-loss from ray-tracing to evaluate the performance of LTE and WiFi 802.11g technologies in aerial networks.