A Primer on HIBS -- High Altitude Platform Stations as IMT Base Stations

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of High Altitude Platform Stations (HIBS) as IMT base stations, discussing use cases, current development status, standardization, spectrum issues, and preliminary performance simulations.

Contribution

It offers the first detailed survey of HIBS technology, standardization efforts, and initial simulation results, highlighting future research directions.

Findings

Preliminary system simulations indicate promising performance of HIBS.

Standardization efforts are progressing in 3GPP and ITU.

Spectrum management remains a key challenge for HIBS deployment.

Abstract

Mobile communication via high-altitude platforms operating in the stratosphere is an idea that has been on the table for decades. In the past few years, however, with recent advances in technology and parallel progress in standardization and regulatory bodies like 3GPP and ITU, these ideas have gained considerable momentum. In this article, we present a comprehensive overview of HIBS - High Altitude Platform Stations as IMT Base Stations. We lay out possible use cases and summarize the current status of the development, from a technological point of view as well as from standardization in 3GPP, and regarding spectrum aspects. We then present preliminary system level simulation results to shed light on the performance of HIBS. We conclude with pointing out several directions for future research.