Aerial Base Station Placement: A Tutorial Introduction

Abstract

The deployment of Aerial Base Stations (ABSs) mounted on board Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is emerging as a promising technology to provide connectivity in areas where terrestrial infrastructure is insufficient or absent. This may occur for example in remote areas, large events, emergency situations, or areas affected by a natural disaster such as a wildfire or a tsunami. To successfully materialize this goal, it is required that ABSs are placed at locations in 3D space that ensure a high Quality of Service (QoS) to the ground terminals. This paper provides a tutorial introduction to this ABS placement problem where the fundamental challenges and trade-offs are first investigated by means of a toy application example. Next, the different approaches in the literature to address the aforementioned challenges in both 2D or 3D space will be introduced and a discussion on adaptive placement will be provided. The paper is concluded by discussing future research directions.

6G NR-U Based Wireless Infrastructure UAV: Standardization, Opportunities, Challenges and Future Scopes

“…The drone provides the communication infrastructure for the ground nodes to communicate and connect with the 5G/6G core networks via the BS module attached to the drone. [25]. The WI UAV as BS can be easily implemented if BS on the drones has the capability to connect with the 5G/6G core networks.…”