What Will the Future of UAV Cellular Communications Be? A Flight from 5G to 6G

Understand

What will the future of UAV cellular communications be? In this tutorial article, we address such a compelling yet difficult question by embarking on a journey from 5G to 6G and sharing a large number of realistic case studies supported by original results.

• We start by overviewing the status quo on UAV communications from an industrial standpoint, providing fresh updates from the 3GPP and detailing new 5G NR features in support of aerial devices.
• We then show the potential and the limitations of such features.
• In particular, we demonstrate how sub-6 GHz massive MIMO can successfully tackle cell selection and interference challenges, we showcase encouraging mmWave coverage evaluations in both urban and suburban/rural settings, and we examine the peculiarities of direct device-to-device communications in the sky.