An Adaptive Bidirectional Multibeam High-Altitude Platforms Aeronautical Telecommunication Network Using Dual Concentric Conical Arrays

Yasser Albagory

doi:10.1109/access.2021.3066091

Abstract

An efficient aeronautical telecommunication network (ATN) is proposed in this article based on adaptive multibeam antenna arrays and high-altitude platforms (HAPs). First, the network structure is demonstrated, and its geometry is analyzed based on a geocentric coordinate system that converts the global positioning system (GPS) and altitude data of aircrafts and HAPs into direction-of-arrival (DOA) information which is required for subsequent beamforming operation. The antenna array is then formed by designing a low-profile dual concentric conical array (DCCA) with uniform elements distribution and is used at the aircraft and HAP to achieve bidirectional beamforming. The antenna array elements are fed by an adaptive-exponent sine profile function to reduce the sidelobe levels while the low-profile dual conical array structure reduces the secondary major lobe and backlobe levels. The proposed beamforming technique is also capable of providing multibeam towards several aircrafts at the same time for effective resource sharing and management. The radiation performance of the array is demonstrated, analyzed, and compared with the concentric circular array where it is found that the secondary major lobe has been reduced by 13 dB with sidelobe level down to -40 dB relative to the mainlobe level. In addition, the bit energy-to-noise power spectral density and probability of bit error of the proposed aeronautical network has been investigated at different operating frequencies including 3.5 GHz and millimeter wave (mm-wave) frequencies of 28 and 39 GHz. The simulation results have shown that a channel capacity of about 3 Gbps can be achieved for BPSK and QPSK signals using bidirectional beamforming for a channel bandwidth of 400 MHz at 28 and 39 GHz mm-wave frequencies while it is about 773 Mbps at 3.5 GHz for 100 MHz bandwidth that can be provided over a line-of-sight distance of 896 km between an aircraft and HAP.

Highlights

The aeronautical high-altitude platforms (HAPs) cellular network for aircrafts has been proposed and discussed in this paper using adaptive antenna arrays where the network structure is first demonstrated, the radio coverage aspects are analyzed, and the communication link performance is improved by developing an adaptive beamforming technique using low-profile dual concentric conical array
The idea of converting the commonly used global positioning system (GPS) information of aircrafts and HAP in aviation systems to direction-of-arrival information is investigated where a geometrical model has been proposed based on geocentric coordinate system and a set of conversion equations have been deduced
The radio link between an aircraft and HAP has been improved through the generation of adaptive narrow beams with low sidelobe and backlobe levels at both the aircraft and HAP where the antenna elements at each array are fed by adaptiveexponent sine profile

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The idea of using stratospheric high-altitude platform (HAP) [24] gains attention for aviation systems where the global wide coverage advantage of satellite systems at fixed station position could improve the system performance and help increase the data rates especially at millimeter wave (mm-wave) bands. HAP can be utilized as a flying basestation to provide aircrafts with high-speed data connectivity and a network of HAPs can provide continuous coverage over oceanic and wide desert regions like satellite systems. CONTRIBUTIONS The ambitious features of HAPs for aeronautical networks are very encouraging, and this paper has worked on improving the communication link performance in the network to efficiently provide high-speed data connectivity.

HAP ATN ARCHITECTURE

ESTABLISHING HAP LOCALIZATION SERVICE TABLE FOR AIRCRAFTS

COMMUNICATION LINK PEROFMANCE OF HAP ATN

CONCLUSION