Abstract— In this paper, we study the problem of modeling packet dropout for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) wireless communications. A Markov model is proposed, which in-corporates the effects of Ricean fading. Unlike the classic Markov channel models, the proposed model is a two-state hidden Markov model with each state being associated with a time-varying packet error rate. The model is able to capture the non-stationary packet dropout characteristics of wireless channels. Intuitively, we use the time-varying packet error rate associated with the channels to describe the non-stationary nature of the packet dropouts, and the two-state Markov model to capture the correlation of the packet dropouts. A closed-form solution is provided for estimating the model parameters from network packet traces. Computer simulations and analysis are carried out to demonstrate the performance and effectiveness of the proposed model.

Index Terms— ad hoc networking, wireless networks, chan¬nel modeling, UAV, Ricean fading, Markov chain, non-stationary statistics

Cite:Yifeng Zhou, Jun Li, Louise Lamont, and Camille-Alain Rabbath , "A Markov-Based Packet Dropout Model for UAV Wireless Communications," Journal of Communications, vol. 7, no.6, pp.418-426, 2012. Doi: 10.4304/jcm.7.6.418-426