Buoyant airborne turbines in B5G/6G wireless networks: Opportunities, challenges, applications, and future directions

Abstract

Buoyant airborne turbines (BATs) are powerful, energy-efficient, adaptive, and environment-friendly. They can be utilized as aerial base stations to expand the wireless network coverage, increase capacity and reliability, improve energy efficiency, and provide a higher line of sight (LoS) probability as they work at higher altitudes. The paper bears the question, what if we equipped a BAT with a complete wireless network base station stack and considered it a new beyond fifth generation/sixth generation (B5G/6G) wireless network device? Therefore, this article discusses enabling BATs as new B5G/6G wireless network equipment. We provide the preliminaries that make the BATs suitable for wireless network applications. We propose the expected configuration and architecture for BATs-based B5G/6G wireless networks. We discuss the opportunities, desired applications, and deployment challenges of BATs in B5G/6G wireless networks. Using simulations, we present the evidence and viability of enabling BATs for extending wireless networks.