Performance Analysis of Tri-Sector Reflector Antennas for HAPS-Based Cellular Networks

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the performance of HAPS-based 5G non-terrestrial networks with tri-sector reflector antennas, highlighting interference constraints and the impact of deployment parameters in urban environments.

Contribution

It provides a system-level simulation analysis of HAPS-based 5G networks with reflector antennas, comparing them to terrestrial networks and identifying key design factors.

Findings

HAPS-based 5G networks face significant inter-cell interference issues.

Reflector configuration and altitude are critical for optimizing performance.

HAPS architecture's performance is constrained mainly by interference.

Abstract

The increasing demand for ubiquitous, highcapacity mobile connectivity has driven cellular systems to explore beyond-terrestrial deployments. In this paper, we present a system-level performance evaluation of fifth-generation (5G) non-terrestrial network (NTN) enabled by high-altitude platform station (HAPS)-based base stations (BSs) equipped with tri-sectoral reflector antennas against fourth-generation (4G) terrestrial network (TN) and 5G TN deployments in a multicell dense urban environment. Using the simulation results comprising the average effective downlink signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) and the average user throughput, along with the subsequent interference analysis, we demonstrate that the reflector-based HAPS architecture is primarily constrained by inter-cell interference, while the combination of reflector configuration and deployment altitude represents a key design parameter.