Robust Communication for Unmanned Vehicles - Challenges and Possibilities

Today's unmanned vehicles require continuous communication for their control. If the communication systems are disrupted, the vehicles' ability to perform their tasks may be greatly reduced, or completely eliminated. In the future, unmanned vehicles are expected to become more autonomous. A higher degree of automation is expected to reduce the data rate requirements for controlling the vehicle. The need for robust and reliable communication, however, will remain high. In the report, we study the communication challenges associated with unmanned ground vehicles and sea vessels. We investigate achievable communication ranges at different data rates, antenna heights, and frequency bands. Communication with the data rates 100 kbit/s, 1 Mbit/s, and 10 Mbit/s are taken into account for the frequency bands 50 MHz, 300 MHz and 1500 MHz. The difference in range between the communication systems with the highest and the lowest data rate can be significant. Hence, a vehicle with a higher degree of automation (lower data rate required) may have a larger operational area compared with one with less automation. The study shows the need to find communication solutions with improved range and a number of possible relay techniques that may improve the range are discussed in the report.