A 3D Modeling Approach to Tractable Analysis in UAV-Enabled Cellular Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a 3D point process model for UAV deployment in cellular networks, enabling tractable analysis of coverage and performance, including limits of cell-free massive MIMO systems, validated by simulations.

Contribution

It proposes a novel 3D point process model based on a 2D marked Poisson process for UAV deployment analysis in large-scale cellular networks.

Findings

Closed-form coverage expressions derived for UAV-enabled networks

Statistical properties of the 3D point process analyzed

Fundamental limits of cell-free massive MIMO with UAVs characterized

Abstract

This paper aims to propose a three-dimensional (3D) point process that can be employed to generally deploy unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in a large-scale cellular network and tractably analyze the fundamental network-wide performances of the network. This 3D point process is devised based on a 2D marked Poisson point process in which each point and its random mark uniquely correspond to the projection and the altitude of each point in the 3D point process, respectively. We elaborate on some important statistical properties of the proposed 3D point process and use them to tractably analyze the coverage performances of a UAV-enabled cellular network wherein all the UAVs equipped with multiple antennas are served as aerial base stations. The downlink coverage of the UAV-enabled cellular network is found and its closed-form results for some special cases are explicitly derived as well. Furthermore, the fundamental limits achieved by cell-free massive antenna array are characterized when coordinating all the UAVs to jointly perform non-coherent downlink transmission. These findings are validated by numerical simulation.