Qualcomm has published the results of a trial run of drones on commercial 4G LTE networks at the Qualcomm UAS Flight Center in San Diego.
After conducting a series of testing on KPIs such as coverage, signal strength, throughput, latency, and mobility under various scenarios on commercial LTE networks, Qualcomm concluded that LTE network provides superior coverage and handover performance and can support safe drone operation in real-world environments.
During the field trial, approximately 1,000 flights were performed to collect datasets that were post processed and analyzed. It also performed simulations to complement field trial results by allowing study of performance tradeoffs when the network is serving many mobile devices and LTE-connected drones simultaneously over a wide area.
According to Qualcomm, the findings showed that existing commercial cellular networks can provide coverage to drones at low altitudes up to 400 feet AGL. Our test drones also showed seamless handovers between different base stations during flights.
