Visible Light Communications for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle: Channel Modeling and Experimental Validation

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been widely applied for their high mobility and low cost, and the visible light communication (VLC) aided UAV can combine the flexibility of UAV and the high transmission rate of VLC. However, the VLC links of a UAV are inevitably affected by the jittering effects, which were rarely characterized. In this letter, the channel between a light emitting diode (LED) and a hovering UAV is modeled considering the random orientation error of the UAV. Closed-form expressions are derived for the probability density function (PDF) and the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the orientation error, which also leads to closed-form asymptotic PDF and CDF expressions of the UAV's VLC channel gain. Simulation and experimental results are demonstrated to verify the theoretical derivations. The work lays a theoretical foundation for VLC-aided UAVs, providing insightful suggestions for the system design.