Abstract
The aerial base stations (ABSs) can be quickly deployed to provide emergency communications and airborne network infrastructures. How to ensure wide coverage, reliable links, and high throughput for ground users under the conditions of limited onboard power supply, large propagation distance, and restricted frequency resource is a critical and challenging issue. In this work, we propose a hybrid-spectrum scheme for ABS-based airborne access networks, named dual-band aerial access (DBAA) where the ABS employs both the UHF and S-bands to provide connectivity for ground users. The DBAA can improve coverage range and reliability by taking advantage of the preferable radio propagation characteristics of the low-frequency band and meanwhile improve network throughput by exploiting the large spectrum bandwidth in the high-frequency band. Following the cross-layer approach, we first conducted a measurement campaign on the large-scale fading of the air-to-ground (A2G) channels at 785 and 2160 MHz simultaneously. We installed an ABS with two antennas on an airship that hovered at several altitudes from 50 to 950 m. We measured the signal power attenuation from the ABS to a ground terminal that moved in rural, suburban, and urban scenarios with the horizontal distance up to 70 km from the airship. Based on the measurement data, we establish the large-scale fading channel model for ABS at different operating frequencies. Then, we design the joint spectrum-and-power allocation algorithm to maximize the network throughput for the dual-band airborne access network. We evaluate the performance of the optimal resource allocation based on the proposed channel model. The simulation results show that the DBAA scheme with the optimal resource allocation can achieve substantial performance improvement in comparison with the single-band solution given the total spectrum bandwidth and onboard power supply.
Highlights
With the development of the communication and aeronautical technologies, the unmanned aerial vehicles such as drones, airships, and air balloons have been increasingly utilized to deploy aerial base stations (ABSs) [1]
In this work we have tackled the challenging issue of providing wide area coverage with high network throughput using ABSs
We propose the dual-band aerial access (DBAA) scheme that combines the advantages of small path loss (PL) in the low-frequency band and large bandwidth in the high-frequency band
Summary
With the development of the communication and aeronautical technologies, the unmanned aerial vehicles such as drones, airships, and air balloons have been increasingly utilized to deploy aerial base stations (ABSs) [1]. The communication equipments are loaded on these platform [2] and act as mobile. Base stations (BSs) to provide access links for ground user equipments (UEs). The airborne access networks have great potential in many application scenarios. ABSs can be quickly deployed to provide emergency communications for rescue and public safety in disasters and social events where the terrestrial BSs are destroyed or overloaded [3]–[5]. When building terrestrial infrastructures is too expensive or infeasible in remote areas, ABSs can get settled in the sky and provide persistent Internet access [6].
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
