Determining whether a drone-coupled user equipment is engaged in a flying state

Abstract

In an embodiment, a network component (e.g., eNB) of a terrestrial wireless communication subscriber network determines whether a drone-coupled user equipment (UE) is engaged in a flying state based upon one or more wireless signals transmitted by the drone-coupled UE. The determination can occur in a variety of ways, such as based on a message from the drone-coupled UE itself (e.g., an express flying-state notification from the drone-coupled UE, a request particular to a flying state, a measurement reporting message, an identifier used by the drone-coupled UE, uplink signal strength measurement(s) or uplink AoA measurements, whether any intervening base station(s) were skipped over in conjunction with a handoff of the drone-coupled UE, etc.).

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.