On the usefulness of flying base stations in 5G and beyond scenarios

Abstract

Considering that one of the goals of the future network generations is to provide ubiquitous communication in the most diverse scenarios to achieve high connection coverage, it is foreseen that the use of unmanned aerial vehicles as flying base stations (UAV-BSs) can potentially extend the network and communication range. UAVs as flying base station can bring the potential to assist user devices and vehicles by carrying communication resources that can accommodate clients that were not previously planned by the ground infrastructure design due to flash crowd events, sudden natural disasters, or any other event that let to an overloaded environment. Allocating UAVs as flying base station still poses significant challenges in their deployment and the effectiveness of information transmission through UAVs as flying base station in the context of wireless communication since it is necessary to deal with both wireless communication capability and interference in the presence of terrestrial infrastructures already present. Besides, it is essential to understand how communication resources affect network performance. This paper studies the feasibility of using UAVs as flying base station in the assistance of wireless communication in a scenario where there is a sudden demand for data transmission due to possible congestion of local infrastructure. We show how the number of communication resources provided by the UAV-BS, the interference caused by the presence of multiple next generation node Bs (gNBs), and the UAV as flying base station positioning affect the network performance. We also highlight the need for a better next generation node B (gNB) and UAVs placement criteria since the received signal power prevents the user equipments (UEs) from using most of the available resources.