An Open, Real-World Dataset of Cellular UAV Communication Properties

In the past few years, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have drastically increased in popularity both from consumer and industry perspectives. A key component towards enabling the widespread usage of UAVs is the ability to stay in near-constant communication with the drone for command and control and conveying relevant instrumentation. The usage of cellular technology, namely LTE, seems to be a natural fit for addressing coverage and Line of Sight (LoS) issues. However, there is a relative dearth of data, specifically open source data that explores key performance aspects of cellular at altitudes typically envisioned for commercial UAV operation. The key contribution of this paper is to analyze data taken from numerous drone flights that include varying altitudes, locations, and multiple cellular carriers as recorded in a medium-sized Midwestern city. Further, we offer our data as an open-source repository for the community offering multiple vantage points for the various runs including the operating system, chipset (through MobileInsight), drone instrumentation, and server-side packet captures as part of the recorded data streams.