IEEE 802.11ad-Aided 5-D Sensing With a UAV Swarm in Urban Environment

Aerial base stations mounted on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) support next-generation wireless networks in challenging environments such as urban areas, disaster zones, and remote locations. Further, UAV swarms overcome the challenges of limited battery life and other operational constraints of a single UAV. However, tracking mobile users on the ground by each UAV and the corresponding synchronization between the UAVs is a significant issue to be resolved before field deployment. Incorporating additional sensing capabilities to fulfill this requirement introduces significant overhead in terms of hardware, cost, and power to each UAV. To this end, we develop a swarm UAV integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) system using the millimeter-wave IEEE 802.11ad protocol. Our proposed system is capable of five-dimensional (5-D) (range, Doppler velocity, azimuth, elevation, and polarization) ground target sensing in an urban environment. Numerical experiments using realistic models demonstrate and validate the performance of 5-D sensing using our proposed 802.11ad-aided UAV ISAC framework.