Outage Probability Analysis in a Cooperative UAVs Network Over Nakagami-m Fading Channels

Abstract

The outage probability in a network of cooperative unmanned airborne vehicles (UAVs) is studied analytically. A master-slave topology with one ground control unit (GCU) is assumed where the GCU communicates directly with a master UAV. The master-slave and master-GCU links are assumed to satisfy a certain minimum data rate required by the application provided by the UAV. The outage probability of the system is defined as the probability that either the rate of transmission over any of the links drops below the predefined minimum value for that link, or the GCU-master link is not able to transmit the aggregate data from all UAVs besides the minimum rate achieved by the master UAV itself. The outage probability is considered over Nakagami-m fading channels. The resultant expression for the outage probability can be used to provide guidelines for system designers to minimize the outage probability of the cooperative UAVs network. In the same time, it could be used to maximize the system throughput with the constraint of not exceeding a certain outage probability limit.