Performance Evaluation of Network Slicing for Aerial Vehicle Communications

Abstract

Using 5G networks for flying vehicles is an opportunity to provide reliable connectivity while reducing cost and requirements on size, weight and power consumption. Network slicing is one feature which is particularly of interest. It enables a reliable aerial vehicle control slice independent from payload communication, such as video streaming to the ground. For the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) use case, we rely on a 5G testbed that serves cars on an operational highway and trains on a parallel rail section. To test the effectiveness of network slicing, we show that the UAV control slice is unaffected by an overloaded UAV payload slice.