A Simple Frequency Diversity Scheme for Ultra-Reliable Communications in Ground Reflection Scenarios

We consider a two-ray ground reflection scenario with unknown distance between transmitter and receiver. By utilizing two frequencies in parallel, we can mitigate possible destructive interference and ensure ultra-reliability with only very limited knowledge at the transmitter. In order to achieve this ultra-reliability, we optimize the frequency spacing such that the worst-case receive power is maximized. Additionally, we provide an algorithm to calculate the optimal frequency spacing. Besides the receive power, we also analyze the achievable rate and outage probability. It is shown that the frequency diversity scheme achieves a significant improvement in terms of reliability over using a single frequency. In particular, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach by a numerical simulation of a unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flying above flat terrain.