5G Aero: A Prototyping Platform for Evaluating Aerial 5G Communications

The application of small-factor, 5G-enabled Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has recently gained significant interest in various aerial and Industry 4.0 applications. However, ensuring reliable, high-throughput, and low-latency 5G communication in aerial applications remains a critical and underexplored problem. This paper presents the 5th generation (5G) Aero, a compact UAV optimized for 5G connectivity, aimed at fulfilling stringent 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) requirements. We conduct a set of experiments in an indoor environment, evaluating the UAV's ability to establish high-throughput, low-latency communications in both Line-of-Sight (LoS) and Non-Line-of-Sight (NLoS) conditions. Our findings demonstrate that the 5G Aero meets the required 3GPP standards for Command and Control (C2) packets latency in both LoS and NLoS, and video latency in LoS communications and it maintains acceptable latency levels for video transmission in NLoS conditions. Additionally, we show that the 5G module installed on the UAV introduces a negligible 1% decrease in flight time, showing that 5G technologies can be integrated into commercial off-the-shelf UAVs with minimal impact on battery lifetime. This paper contributes to the literature by demonstrating the practical capabilities of current 5G networks to support advanced UAV operations in telecommunications, offering insights into potential enhancements and optimizations for UAV performance in 5G networks