Path Loss Model for 2.4GHZ Indoor Wireless Networks with Application to Drones

摘要

Indoor wireless communication using Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) is becoming a major need for the success of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud robotics in both developed and developing countries. With different operating conditions, interference, obstacles and type of building materials used, it is difficult to predict the path loss components in an indoor environment, which are crucial for the network design. It has been observed that the proposed indoor path loss models cannot be used for UAV operations due to variations in building materials utilized, floor plans, scattering on both ends, etc. In this work, we propose a non-deterministic statistical indoor path loss model, namely, the UAV Low Altitude Air to Ground (U-LAAG) model, adapted from ITU-R model, which can be used for the 2.4 - 2.5 GHz, Industrial Scientific and Medical (ISM) band. To test and validate the proposed model, we conduct several experiments with different conditions such as University premise with obstacles, typical dwelling and basement locations. We have also compared U-LAAG with popular path loss models such as ITU-R, Two-ray and Log-distance; U-LAAG matches closely with the drive test results as compared to other models. We believe that the proposed ULAAG model can be used as basis to design accurate indoor communication networks required for regular Wi-Fi communications and deployment and operations of UAV, IoT and cloud robotics.