Performance Analysis of the Access Link of Drone Base Station Networks with LoS/NLoS Transmissions

In this paper, we provide performance analysis for drone base station (DBS)-enabled wireless communication networks. The lower bound performance of such networks has been previously obtained in the literature, assuming DBSs are statically hovering and randomly distributed according to a homogeneous Poisson point process (HPPP). We derive the upper bound performance of such networks assuming a teleportation mode, i.e., DBSs can instantaneously move to the positions directly overhead ground users (UEs). By considering both line-of-sight (LoS) and non-line-of-sight (NLoS) transmissions in the access links between DBSs and ground UEs, coverage probability and area spectral efficiency (ASE) are derived in closed-form expressions based on stochastic geometry analysis. The characterization of both the lower and upper bound performances of DBS networks indicates the performance region of practical DBS network operations. Moreover, our analytical and simulation results in this paper provide guidelines for performance optimization of further DBS networks.