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Robust Fronthaul-Aware Link Adaptation for UAV Communication With Lossy Wireless Fronthaul

Zhang, Chao LU orcid ; Medeiros, Eduardo LU ; Almeida, Igor ; Eriksson, Per-Erik ; Höst, Stefan LU and Ödling, Per LU (2025) In IEEE Communications Letters 29(10). p.2263-2267
Abstract

This letter addresses loss of packets in a wireless fronthaul link being interpreted as channel errors for the service link. This may occur if, for instance, User Equipment (UE) is served by a radio unit in an Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle (UAV) via a wireless fronthaul link to a baseband unit (BU) on the ground. The fronthaul packet loss leads to a mismatch between the real and estimated channel state, which in turn results in degraded system performance. The letter proposes a novel strategy to mitigate fronthaul packet loss impact and regain network performance without requiring complex packet-to-PHY data mapping. The method identifies fronthaul packet losses by detecting missing inputs to the Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) in an... (More)

This letter addresses loss of packets in a wireless fronthaul link being interpreted as channel errors for the service link. This may occur if, for instance, User Equipment (UE) is served by a radio unit in an Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle (UAV) via a wireless fronthaul link to a baseband unit (BU) on the ground. The fronthaul packet loss leads to a mismatch between the real and estimated channel state, which in turn results in degraded system performance. The letter proposes a novel strategy to mitigate fronthaul packet loss impact and regain network performance without requiring complex packet-to-PHY data mapping. The method identifies fronthaul packet losses by detecting missing inputs to the Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) in an OFDM modulator and maps this information to a codeword loss metric, which is fed back and processed at the BU. The loss metric is compared against thresholds by the BU to differentiate between fronthaul and channel-related losses. Performance evaluation is conducted using a 5G New Radio (NR) downlink system with a UAV serving a UE under full-buffer traffic conditions. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves up to 64.1% gain in throughput compared to conventional link adaptation schemes under various fronthaul packet loss rates and service link signal-to-noise ratios.

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Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
; ; ; ; and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
fronthaul, link adaptation, network performance optimization, packet loss, Uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs)
in
IEEE Communications Letters
volume
29
issue
10
pages
5 pages
publisher
IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
external identifiers
  • scopus:105012355886
ISSN
1089-7798
DOI
10.1109/LCOMM.2025.3592520
language
English
LU publication?
yes
additional info
Publisher Copyright: © 1997-2012 IEEE.
id
615c73a6-681b-44e3-9267-10fa7343a42d
date added to LUP
2025-12-19 13:40:54
date last changed
2025-12-19 14:40:36
@article{615c73a6-681b-44e3-9267-10fa7343a42d,
  abstract     = {{<p>This letter addresses loss of packets in a wireless fronthaul link being interpreted as channel errors for the service link. This may occur if, for instance, User Equipment (UE) is served by a radio unit in an Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle (UAV) via a wireless fronthaul link to a baseband unit (BU) on the ground. The fronthaul packet loss leads to a mismatch between the real and estimated channel state, which in turn results in degraded system performance. The letter proposes a novel strategy to mitigate fronthaul packet loss impact and regain network performance without requiring complex packet-to-PHY data mapping. The method identifies fronthaul packet losses by detecting missing inputs to the Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) in an OFDM modulator and maps this information to a codeword loss metric, which is fed back and processed at the BU. The loss metric is compared against thresholds by the BU to differentiate between fronthaul and channel-related losses. Performance evaluation is conducted using a 5G New Radio (NR) downlink system with a UAV serving a UE under full-buffer traffic conditions. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves up to 64.1% gain in throughput compared to conventional link adaptation schemes under various fronthaul packet loss rates and service link signal-to-noise ratios.</p>}},
  author       = {{Zhang, Chao and Medeiros, Eduardo and Almeida, Igor and Eriksson, Per-Erik and Höst, Stefan and Ödling, Per}},
  issn         = {{1089-7798}},
  keywords     = {{fronthaul; link adaptation; network performance optimization; packet loss; Uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs)}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  number       = {{10}},
  pages        = {{2263--2267}},
  publisher    = {{IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.}},
  series       = {{IEEE Communications Letters}},
  title        = {{Robust Fronthaul-Aware Link Adaptation for UAV Communication With Lossy Wireless Fronthaul}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/LCOMM.2025.3592520}},
  doi          = {{10.1109/LCOMM.2025.3592520}},
  volume       = {{29}},
  year         = {{2025}},
}