Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become extremely popular for both military and civilian applications due to their ease of deployment, cost-effectiveness, high maneuverability, and availability. Both applications, however, need reliable communication for command and control (C2) and/or data transmission. Utilizing commercial cellular networks for drone communication can enable beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operation, high data rate transmission, and secure communication. However, deployment of cellular-connected drones over commercial LTE/5G networks still presents various challenges such as sparse coverage outside urban areas, and interference caused to the network as the UAV is visible to many towers. Commercial 5G networks can offer various features for aerial user equipment (UE) far beyond what LTE could provide by taking advantage of mmWave, flexible numerology, slicing, and the capability of applying AI-based solutions. Limited experimental data is available to investigate the operation of aerial UEs over current, without any modification, commercial 5G networks, particularly in suburban and NON-URBAN areas. In this paper, we perform a comprehensive study of drone communications over the existing low-band and mid-band 5G networks in a suburban area for different velocities and elevations, comparing the performance against that of LTE. It is important to acknowledge that the network examined in this research is primarily designed and optimized to meet the requirements of terrestrial users, and may not adequately address the needs of aerial users. This paper not only reports the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) compared among all combinations of the test cases but also provides recommendations for aerial users to enhance their communication quality by controlling their trajectory.

翻译：无人飞行器（UAV）因其部署简便、成本效益高、机动性强及易获取性，在军事和民用领域均得到广泛应用。然而，这两类应用都需要可靠的通信支持，用于指挥控制（C2）和/或数据传输。利用商用蜂窝网络进行无人机通信，能够实现超视距（BVLOS）操作、高数据传输速率以及安全通信。然而，在商用LTE/5G网络上部署蜂窝连接无人机仍面临诸多挑战，例如城区以外区域覆盖稀疏，以及无人机因被多个基站可见而对网络造成的干扰。商用5G网络通过利用毫米波（mmWave）、灵活参数集、网络切片以及基于人工智能的解决方案，可为空中用户设备（UE）提供远超LTE的能力。目前，在未经过任何修改的商用5G网络上（尤其是在郊区和非城区场景）进行空中UE运行的实验数据十分有限。本文针对现有低频段和中频段5G网络在郊区环境下，对不同速度和高度下的无人机通信进行了全面研究，并将其性能与LTE进行了对比分析。需要指出的是，本研究考察的网络主要针对地面用户需求设计和优化，可能无法充分满足空中用户的需求。本文不仅报告了所有测试用例组合的关键性能指标（KPI）对比结果，还通过轨迹控制为空中用户提升通信质量提供了建议。