Energy Efficiency of Heterogeneous Air-Ground Cellular Networks

With the development of aerial platforms, it becomes possible for aerial platform-based base stations to coordinate with terrestrial cellular networks and provide services for terrestrial users immediately and effectually. Hence, in the paper, a heterogeneous air-ground cellular network is proposed which can provide high data rate for local users while enhancing energy efficiency of the heterogeneous network. Different from regular topology of terrestrial cellular networks, performance of heterogeneous air-ground networks are analyzed with a random topology of aerial and terrestrial base stations using Poisson point process with different densities respectively. And the relationship between energy efficiency of heterogeneous networks and densities of aerial and terrestrial base stations is given in an explicit form. Simulations are carried out and show that energy efficiency of the heterogeneous network can be significantly improved with appropriate densities of terrestrial and aerial base stations.