Cellular enables safer drone deployments.
Cellular connectivity will be key for coordinated operation and control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, more commonly referred to as drones, enabling a growing set of use cases within and beyond the operator’s visual line of sight.
Our vision for the safer, autonomous drone of the future.
With its rich roadmap to 5G, cellular technology can bring a new dimension of high reliability, robust security, ubiquitous coverage and seamless mobility to wide-scale drone operation, enabling new kinds of services—helping farmers improve crop yields, giving workers tools to more safely conduct inspections of critical infrastructure, and changing how we respond to disasters.
Advancing cellular drone communication.
Qualcomm is accelerating drone technology development by testing drone operation over commercial LTE networks at our FAA-authorized UAS Flight Center—a test environment that represents real time conditions mixed with a commercial, residential, rural and FAA controlled airspace.
Optimizing today's LTE networks.
Our early findings showed that current cellular networks can provide coverage to drones at higher altitudes up to 400ft. We also found out that our test drones are capable of demonstrating seamless handovers between different base stations during flights with zero link failures. However, we still see several opportunities to optimize LTE for safe drone operation.
Leading the world to 5G.
5G will enable wide scale deployments of mission-critical drone use cases, For example, a team of drones collaborating with each other to conduct search and rescue mission – first searching for and finding a lost hiker, then manipulating and lowering a net, and ultimately bringing the victim to the nearest medical facility.
Delivering new level of intelligence.
Besides advancing cellular communication for drones, Qualcomm is delivering new levels of on-board intelligence. Qualcomm Snapdragon Flight drone development brings together all of our drone technology innovations on a highly optimized heterogeneous computing platform
