FIELD OF THE DISCLOSURE

This disclosure relates generally to aerial devices and, more particularly, to facilitating network management of aerial devices.

BACKGROUND

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also referred to as drones or unmanned aerial systems (UASs), may be mobile platforms capable of acquiring (e.g., sensing) information, delivering goods, handling objects, and/or performing other actions, in many operating scenarios/applications. UAVs may be utilized to travel to remote locations that are inaccessible to manned vehicles, locations that are dangerous to humans, and/or any other locations more suited for unmanned vehicles than manned vehicles. Upon reaching such locations, drones can perform many actions, such as acquiring sensor data (e.g., audio, image, video, and/or other sensor data) at a target location, delivering goods (e.g., packages, medical supplies, food supplies, engineering materials, etc.) to the target location, handling objects (e.g., retrieving objects, operating equipment, repairing equipment, etc.) at the target location, and so forth. In the various operating scenarios/applications, the actions performed by the UAVs may require navigating the UAVs and maintaining network connectivity, such as connectivity to a cellular network.

SUMMARY

Using various embodiments, interference mitigation of user equipment (UEs) can facilitate maintaining of network connectivity of the UEs, including UAVs, by a wireless network. In various aspects, the UEs can maintain connectivity to and communicate with base stations (e.g., also referred to as access points or cells) of a cellular network (e.g., a radio access network of the cellular network) while at flight altitude or ground level. The various embodiments may be used for UAVs and/or aerial devices of various sizes, including small UAVs (sUAVs) and larger UAVs, shapes, weight, speed, battery life, and/or other characteristics/traits. The UAVs and/or aerial devices may be with or without passengers.

When a UE is utilizing a serving access point of the wireless network, the UE utilizes capacity of the serving access point while contributing interference to other access points of the wireless network, such as neighboring access points of the serving access point. Traditionally, for example, cellular networks are optimized for devices connecting at a ground level, such as two meters or less off the ground, where typical devices (e.g., mobile phones) generally operate. In such cases, ground level objects (e.g., buildings and other manmade objects, trees and other natural obstacles, etc.) and geographic conditions (e.g., landforms including hills, mountains, etc. that may affect signal transmissions) may cause signal attenuation. Therefore, cellular base stations are generally optimized based on these factors for devices affected by such obstacles.

However, UEs, such as UAVs, at higher altitudes may instead encounter little to no ground level obstructions from ground level objects and may generate signal interference on multiple access points of the network. As such, interference impact to the wireless network attributed to (e.g., associated with, correlated to, estimated to be caused/contributed by) UEs at higher altitudes may generally be higher than for terrestrial UEs (e.g., also referred to as ground-based UEs or ground level UEs) due to the generally lower path losses between the higher altitude UEs and different access points of the wireless network. In this regard, the interference experienced by a neighboring access point may be based at least on a power received by the neighboring access point from the UE due to a transmission from the UE to the UE's serving access point.

Quality of the UEs' connection to the wireless network may be based on performance characteristics including accessibility (e.g., radio resource control (RRC) setup success rate), mobility (e.g., handover success rate), utilization/occupancy, and/or other characteristics. In some cases, the performance characteristics may be, may include, or may be referred to as, key performance indicators (KPIs). Examples of KPIs may include those provided in the 3rdGeneration Partnership Project (3GPP) standard, including accessibility, retainability, integrity, availability, and mobility. For a given UE, uplink performance characteristics of the UE may be based on a call drop rate, handover success rate, throughput, and/or other performance characteristics associated with user experience.

Using various embodiments, interference impact due to accommodation of, for example, UEs at flight altitude by the wireless network to facilitate maintaining/sharing of network connectivity (e.g., network resources) to UEs and thus facilitate coexistence of aerial UEs and terrestrial UEs. Interference impact may be mitigated in a wider geographic location corresponding to areas of pertinence associated with UEs connected to access points of the wireless network. In an aspect, a UAV's network resource access and utilization may be scheduled on a per region level (e.g., scheduling takes into consideration network impact of the UAV on a cell tower cluster level, square-mile level, or other region level) in addition to a per cell level in order to control and limit interference on extended regions. In some cases, a series of progressive mitigation actions may be performed on the UEs to mitigate interference impact.

An access point may determine that it is impacted by interference based on power received by one or more antennas of the access point. In some cases, interference may be provided in units of dB or dB per physical resource block. For a given access point impacted by interference (e.g., interference above an interference threshold), UEs associated with such interference impact may be identified and one or more of these UEs may be selected for mitigation to reduce an interference impact associated with the selected UE(s). Selection may be based on one or more traffic profiles associated with the UE(s). In some cases, a traffic profile associated with a HE is indicative of actions performed or to be performed by the UE and/or a priority level associated with the UE. An instruction may be sent to the UEs selected for mitigation to cause adjustment of an operation of the UEs to reduce an interference impact of the UEs on the network in general and the given access point in particular. By way of non-limiting example, to mitigate interference associated with the selected UE, the instruction may include an instruction to the UE to cause the UE to adjust one or more of a data compression (e.g., data size transmitted by the UE), a throughput, an uplink power, a queueing scheme, and/or an uplink power of the UE, and/or to migrate the UE to a different communication protocol/technology or different type/category associated with a communication protocol/technology.

In one or more embodiments, a method to facilitate interference mitigation for a radio access network includes receiving, by a processor from a base station of the radio access network, an indication of an interference event associated with the base station. The method further includes determining, by the processor, a set of UAVs associated with the base station during a flight of the set of UAVs, where the interference event is at least partially attributed to each UAV of at least a subset of the set of UAVs. The method further includes selecting, by the processor, a UAV among the subset based on a respective traffic profile associated with each UAV of the subset. The method further includes providing, by the processor, an instruction to the UAV to cause an adjustment of an operation of the UAV to reduce an interference impact of the UAV on the base station.

In one or more embodiments, a system to facilitate interference mitigation for a radio access network includes one or more processors. The system further includes a non-transitory machine readable medium comprising instructions stored thereon, which when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations including receiving an indication of an interference event associated with a base station of a plurality of base stations of the radio access network. The operations further include determining a set of areas of pertinence, wherein each area of pertinence of the set of areas of pertinence includes the base station. The operations further include determining a set of devices, where each device of the set of devices is associated with a corresponding area of pertinence among the set of areas of pertinence. The operations further include selecting a device of the set of devices based on a priority associated with the device. The operations further include providing an instruction to the device to cause an adjustment of an operation of the device to reduce an interference impact on the base station associated with the device.

In one or more embodiments, a tangible or non-transitory machine readable storage medium including machine readable instructions which, when executed, cause one or more processors of a device to perform operations including receiving an indication of an interference event associated with a base station of a radio access network. The operations further include identifying a UAV associated with the interference event based on a profile associated with the UAV. The operations further include providing, during a flight of the UAV, an instruction to the UAV to cause an adjustment of an operation of the UAV to reduce an interference impact of the UAV on the base station.

The scope of the disclosure is defined by the claims, which are incorporated into this section by reference. A more complete understanding of embodiments of the disclosure will be afforded to those skilled in the art, as well as a realization of additional advantages thereof, by a consideration of the following detailed description of one or more embodiments. Reference will be made to the appended sheets of drawings that will first be described briefly.

