An SDR-based LTE System for Unmanned Aerial Systems

In the communication community, software-defined radio (SDR) has been widely adopted for its flexibility in different communication technologies. In this paper, we explore the application of SDR over unmanned aerial systems (UAS). More specifically, we develop an SDR-based long-term evolution (LTE) communication system with features of compact size, low power consumption, and high computing capability to enable its deployment over UAS. The system is implemented by integrating (1) Jetson TX2, which is a classical high-performance embedded computing module, (2) LimeSDR, which is a light-weighted SDR hardware module, and (3) srsLTE, which is an open-source software module that provides LTE implementations. Using this prototype, we conduct comprehensive experiments to evaluate different aspects of the system performance, such as Round Trip Time, Throughput, Signal to Noise Ratio, Computing Resource Consumption, etc. Moreover, we compare the performance of the LTE system built on Jetson TX2 with another LTE system built on a personal computer with a general-purpose processor (GPP). Our study provides important observation and design guidelines for future wireless communication systems that can be carried by UAS.