Coverage Analysis of Single-swarm mmWave UAV Networks under Multiple Types of Blockages

Millimeter wave (mmWave)-based unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication is susceptible to blockages, even from humans. Previous studies that primarily focused only on static blockage may not accurately characterize the system performance. This paper investigates the coverage performance of mmWave UAV networks by jointly considering multiple types of blockages under finite homogeneous Poisson point process and Binomial point process, which are commonly employed in finite area scenarios with random and fixed number of UAVs, respectively. Particularly, we derive the average line-of-sight probability and coverage probability under static, dynamic, and self blockages. Simulations verify our theoretical results, demonstrating that: the above system performance predominantly depends on self-blockage if UAVs are at high altitudes. Conversely, at relatively low altitudes, all three types of blockages impact them, with static blockage being the dominant factor. To avoid self-blockage, UAV height should satisfy <italic>h</italic> &#x003E; <italic>h_R</italic>+<italic>r_i</italic>/tan &#x03C6;_b, where <italic>h_R</italic> is the height of the user equipment (UE), <italic>r_i</italic> is the two-dimensional distance of the UAV-UE link, &#x03C6;_b is the elevation angle between UE and UAV. The required height is proportional to <italic>r_i</italic> and increases as distance <italic>d</italic> between the user and UE decreases, as &#x03C6;_b is proportional to <italic>d</italic>. The findings help on designing the network parameters. To our best knowledge, this is the first work to analyze the coverage of mmWave UAV networks under multiple types of blockages.