ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Signal Process.
Sec. Signal Processing for Communications
Airborne IMT Users in Precision Agriculture: Monte-Carlo Analysis of UAV Interference in 694–2690 Bands
Alexandr Solochshenko 1
Karina Turzhanova 1
Alexander Pastukh 2
Valery Tikhvinskiy 3
Yelizaveta Vitulyova 4
1. Almaty University of Power Engineering and Telecommunication, Almaty, Kazakhstan
2. The M.I. Krivosheev National Research Centre for Telecommunication (NRCT), Moscow, Russia
3. Nacional'nyj issledovatel'skij universitet Vyssaa skola ekonomiki, Moscow, Russia
4. JSC “Institute of Digital Engineering and Technology”, Almaty, Kazakhstan
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Abstract
Abstract. The integration of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) into precision agriculture, as envisioned in the agricultural systems, promises significant gains in crop monitoring, yield forecasting, and targeted agro-technical interventions. However, the use of IMT frequency bands for real-time UAV communications introduces new spectrum sharing and compatibility challenges. Unlike terrestrial user equipment, airborne agricultural drones operate always outdoors, above the base-station downtilt, with predominantly line-of-sight (LoS) propagation to multiple cells, drastically altering compatibility conditions and potentially increasing interference to other operators. This paper proposes a Monte Carlo-based simulation framework presents a Monte-Carlo-based analysis of interference generated by such UAVs in IMT frequency allocations across 694–2690 MHz.. Simulations model rural and urban macrocell deployments typical of large-scale farmlands, incorporating 3D antenna patterns, altitude-dependent air-to-ground channel models, realistic LTE/NR power-control schemes, and UAV operational patterns. Key metrics include aggregate uplink interference at victim cells, downlink degradation at UAVs, and cross-link interference in TDD systems. Results show that even low-power UAV transmissions can exceed harmful interference thresholds in multiple adjacent-channel cells. Operational recommendations are provided to ensure coexistence of precision-agriculture UAVs with terrestrial IMT networks.
Summary
Keywords
Airborne user equipment (UAV-UE), Frequency separation distance, IMT systems, Monte Carlo simulation, precision agriculture, Rural macrocell networks, Spectrum coexistence, uplink interference
Received
09 December 2025
Accepted
17 February 2026
Copyright
© 2026 Solochshenko, Turzhanova, Pastukh, Tikhvinskiy and Vitulyova. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Yelizaveta Vitulyova
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