Abstract:

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), i.e. drones, have been commercially

successful in both the consumer and industrial sectors in part due to the wide

variety of applications they benefit. In environmental monitoring and precision

agriculture, UASs can be utilized for data collection from rural IoT sensor

networks. These networks frequently operate over some variant of the IEEE

802.15.4 standard, taking advantage of the standard’s low power usage.

Consumer 802.15.4 radios are widely available in compact form factors, making

them ideal for application in environmental and agricultural sensor networks.

Unlike other wireless standards, 802.15.4 is well studied on the ground but has

not received rigorous evaluation in three dimensional aerial communication,

which introduces new challenges, such as antenna radiation patterns and extreme

ranges. This paper provides an initial look at the performance of 2.4GHz

802.15.4 for data collection from a UAS. We provide experimental performance

measurements using an outdoor aerial testbed, examining how factors, such as

antenna orientation, altitude, antenna placement, and obstruction affect signal

strength and reception rate of packets. We find that these parameters play a

significant role in reception rate, but have a much weaker impact on received

signal strength. We conclude by discussing some takeaways on sensor network

configuration for aerial data collection.

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