Measurement-based Vegetation Penetration Loss Model for UAV-to-Ground Communications

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication is a promising part of next generation mobile communication network. Path loss (PL) is vital for the communication quality, where vegetation penetration loss (VPL) is a critical factor under UAV-to-ground (U2G) scenarios. In this paper, we propose a VPL model considering the foliage density and moisture content, and a measurement system is developed and implemented to acquire a large amount of channel data for fitting model parameters. Measurement results show that the proposed VPL model is more accurate and universal compared with typical models such as COST-235 and FITU-R. The proposed model and measurement results can provide a valuable reference for U2G communication in vegetation scenarios.