Fresnel Line-of-Sight Probability With Applications in Airborne Platform-Assisted Communications

The ecosystem of airborne platforms is maturing rapidly and becoming essential to meeting the communication requirements of modern wireless networks. In such a context, the speed, range, and quality of service are highly dependent on a timely access to the right amount and type of affordable spectrum. In this way, evaluating the statistical properties of the air-to-ground (AtG) channel in different built-up propagation environments with regard to the operating frequency is crucial for performance analysis of airborne platform-assisted communications. In this paper, we construct a framework for the line-of-sight (LoS) probability based on the intrusion ratio of obstacles within the first Fresnel zone, yielding an analytical expression for the LoS probability that is sensitive to the operating frequency, the transmitter and receiver heights, the horizontal distance between them, and three other parameters depicting the statistical properties of the urban environment. The model developed is accurate enough to capture scattering mechanisms such as reflection and diffraction, while being sufficiently flexible mathematically to allow, based for instance on powerful analytical tools such as stochastic geometry, a seamless and physically meaningful system-level performance evaluation of modern wireless networks in the presence of airborne platforms.