UAV Bluetooth Communication Link Assessment for Emergency Response Applications

Over the last number of years Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have become increasingly popular in several fields such as agriculture and medicine. Recently UAVs have been used for the deployment within Emergency Response for visual scouting of an impacted area in addition to delivering supplies via payload. UAVs are also capable of acting as networking nodes using incorporated technology or by attaching independent hardware via the UAVs payload capability. The application of UAVs as a network node(s) can enable increased performance within the network as UAV based nodes can alter their current position due to their unique nature of mobility. Therefore, this study aims to assess the performance of aerial communication using UVAs which incorporate the use of a small Bluetooth 5.0 (BLE 5.0) node as a payload. In this research, the impact generated via Air-Ground Propagation on the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) measurement was investigated. In addition to this, this paper also investigates any performance difference displayed between different Transmission Power Profiles as this in turn affects the overall power consumption of the transmitting device. When operating at heights of 5, 10, and 15 Metres the maximum average loss was found to be 2.37 dBm among the Standard Transmission Power profile and a maximum average loss of 1.18 dBm occurring with the Enhanced Transmission Power Profile.