Air-to-Air Channel Sounder: System Implementations and Channel Characterizations

As a key component of beyond-fifth-generation (B5G) and sixth-generation (6G) communication networks, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) communications have found widespread applications across various domains. In this paper, we develop an air-to-air (A2A) channel sounder assisted by two rotary UAVs. An on-site data framing scheme is also implemented in the field programmable gate array (FPGA). On this basis, an A2A channel measurement campaign is conducted in a campus scenario at 3.6 GHz. Then, we analyze the fading characteristics of A2A channels such as path loss (PL), shadow fading (SF), and small-scale fading. These results provide valuable insights for A2A channel modeling and UAV communication system design.