ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the details of an efficient and robust unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication system, starting with the derivation of low-complexity algorithms and their efficient implementation in a complete system, and ending with results of the system in realistic flight scenarios. Starting with the achievable gross throughput of more than 13.50 Mbps, the data link shows its applicability to payload data and telemetry use cases, e.g., the Doppler shift robustness of the novel and highly hardware efficient frequency correction mechanism has revealed more than sufficient performance to even handle the consequences of very fast aircraft. In avoidance of unnecessary hardware complexity overhead, the selected idea for the implementation is a closed-loop synchronization mechanism capable of estimating and correcting frequency deviations in a satisfactory range. Toward the end of the chapter reports several performance evaluations, such as throughput, Doppler frequency robustness, realistic flight scenario bit error rate performance and a link budget of the final airborne communication systems.
