Qualcomm report says drones can get strong LTE coverage at up to 400 feet

Drones can get strong LTE signals even when they’re high up in the air, according to a study released by Qualcomm.

The company performed over 1,000 test flights and determined that drones can still get “comparable” coverage to ground mobile devices at altitudes of up to 400 feet.

Qualcomm says that there’s even an advantage to being higher up, as cellular devices handover performance for drones is superior to ground mobile devices. Connections ended up being more stable and experienced less interference from other signals in the air as opposed to on the ground.

Going forward, Qualcomm says it wants further reduce interference to allow for more LTE-enabled drones to be airborne at once. It also wants to load the drones with software that has them connecting to stronger cell tower signals at default.

This LTE drone technology may be particularly useful for companies like Amazon and UPS, who have been looking into using the devices to deliver packages.

In other Qualcomm-related news, the company has been engaged in an ongoing legal dispute with Apple over patents it made for its chip technology. Most recently, it was reported that Qualcomm is seeking an U.S. import ban on iPhones.

Image credit: Flickr – Maurizio Pesce

Source: Qualcomm