Integrating UAVs into Existing Wireless Networks: A Stochastic Geometry Approach

The integration of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) into wireless networks has opened a new horizon to meet the capacity and coverage requirements foreseen in future wireless networks. Harnessing UAVs as flying base stations (BSs) has helped to achieve a cost-effective and on-the-go wireless network that may be used in several scenarios such as to support disaster response and in temporary hotspots. Despite the extensive research on the application side of UAVs, the integration of UAVs as BSs into existing wireless networks remains an open challenge. While UAV BSs can help to increase the area spectral efficiency, the added network heterogeneity and BS densification may diminish the capacity gains due to increased handover rates. In this work, we shed some light on this tradeoff by studying a three tier network architecture consisting of macro, small, and UAV BSs and analyze its coverage and rate performance. In particular, we consider joint control/data and split architectures and express the rate performance for stationary and mobile users, using an analytical approach based on stochastic geometry. While both joint and split architectures offer similar performance for stationary users, the numerical results suggest the splitting of control and data plane for mobile users.

[1]  Walid Saad,et al.  A Tutorial on UAVs for Wireless Networks: Applications, Challenges, and Open Problems , 2018, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials.

[2]  Karina Mabell Gomez,et al.  Designing and implementing future aerial communication networks , 2016, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[3]  Jeffrey G. Andrews,et al.  Joint Resource Partitioning and Offloading in Heterogeneous Cellular Networks , 2013, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[4]  Rui Zhang,et al.  Wireless communications with unmanned aerial vehicles: opportunities and challenges , 2016, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[5]  Ben Liang,et al.  Stochastic Geometric Analysis of User Mobility in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks , 2015, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.

[6]  Zdenek Becvar.  Performance of mobile networks with UAVs: Can flying base stations substitute ultra-dense small cells? , 2017 .

[7]  Lav Gupta,et al.  Survey of Important Issues in UAV Communication Networks , 2016, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials.

[8]  Mohamed-Slim Alouini,et al.  Handover Management in 5G and Beyond: A Topology Aware Skipping Approach , 2016, IEEE Access.

[9]  Fumiyuki Adachi,et al.  Radio Resource Allocation for Low-Medium-Altitude Aerial Platform Based TD-LTE Networks against Disaster , 2012, 2012 IEEE 75th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Spring).

[10]  Luiz A. DaSilva,et al.  A Stochastic Geometry Model of Backhaul and User Coverage in Urban UAV Networks , 2017, ArXiv.

[11]  Kyung-Joon Park,et al.  Handover Management of Net-Drones for Future Internet Platforms , 2016, Int. J. Distributed Sens. Networks.

[12]  Mohamed-Slim Alouini,et al.  Velocity-Aware Handover Management in Two-Tier Cellular Networks , 2016, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

[13]  Ming Ding,et al.  Please Lower Small Cell Antenna Heights in 5G , 2016, 2016 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM).

[14]  Zhiyong Feng,et al.  Coverage probability of multiple UAVs supported ground network , 2017 .

[15]  E. Bolker,et al.  Generalized Dirichlet tessellations , 1986 .

[16]  Halim Yanikomeroglu,et al.  3-D Placement of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Base Station (UAV-BS) for Energy-Efficient Maximal Coverage , 2017, IEEE Wireless Communications Letters.

[17]  T. Mattfeldt.  Stochastic Geometry and Its Applications , 1996 .

[18]  Ben Liang,et al.  Handoff Rate Analysis in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks with Poisson and Poisson Cluster Patterns , 2015, MobiHoc.

[19]  Lutz H.-J. Lampe,et al.  Handover Rate Characterization in 3D Ultra-Dense Heterogeneous Networks , 2018, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology.

[20]  Mohamed-Slim Alouini,et al.  Mobility-Aware Modeling and Analysis of Dense Cellular Networks With $C$ -Plane/ $U$ -Plane Split Architecture , 2016, IEEE Transactions on Communications.