Airplane-Aided Integrated Next-Generation Networking

TL;DR

This paper proposes an integrated next-generation network using passenger planes and high-altitude platforms as mobile base stations with millimeter wave communication, enhancing connectivity by leveraging opportunistic aerial assistance.

Contribution

It introduces a novel air-to-ground network architecture utilizing planes and HAPs as mobile base stations with advanced beamforming and derives spectral efficiency expressions for system optimization.

Findings

High directional gain reduces interference among users.

Spectral efficiency expressions enable system performance evaluation.

Airliners and HAPs effectively extend terrestrial networks using satellite backhaul.

Abstract

A high-rate yet low-cost air-to-ground (A2G) communication backbone is conceived for integrating the space and terrestrial network by harnessing the opportunistic assistance of the passenger planes or high altitude platforms (HAPs) as mobile base stations (BSs) and millimetre wave communication. The airliners act as the network-provider for the terrestrial users while relying on satellite backhaul. Three different beamforming techniques relying on a large-scale planar array are used for transmission by the airliner/HAP for achieving a high directional gain, hence minimizing the interference among the users. Furthermore, approximate spectral efficiency (SE) and area spectral efficiency (ASE) expressions are derived and quantified for diverse system parameters.