Aerial Access Nodes and Virtual Wireless Access: A Look into Integration Strategies

One of the significant directions for coping with challenging requirements of 5G and beyond networks is virtual wireless access (VWA). In a VWA framework, physical access nodes form virtual cells tailored to the conditions of the network. Another research area that increases agility of wireless networks is utilizing aerial networks to support its terrestrial counterparts. Despite the recently flourished literature on airborne communications, there are limited studies on integrating aerial nodes into existing network. Therefore, this article investigates efficient integration methods of aerial access nodes into networks with VWA. In particular, we first propose an optimal virtual cell formation method, which is the preferred VWA framework in this study. Second, the VWA framework is combined with airborne communications by utilizing a drone-base-station (drone-BS) as a flexible transmission point. Note that in this case, both the 3D position of the drone-BS and the optimal virtual cell formation need to be obtained. Therefore, several strategies are developed to perform virtual cell formation by considering the flexibility of the drone-BSs with the help of tools from convex optimization and artificial intelligence.

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