Green Air-Ground Integrated Heterogeneous Network in 6G Era

doi:10.12142/ZTECOM.202101006

Abstract

Abstract:

The research of three-dimensional integrated communication technology plays a key role in achieving the ubiquitous connectivity, ultra-high data rates, and emergency communications in the sixth generation (6G) networks. Aerial networking provides a promising solution to flexible, scalable, low-cost and reliable coverage for wireless devices. The integration of aerial network and terrestrial network has been an inevitable paradigm in the 6G era. However, energy-efficient communications and networking among aerial network and terrestrial network face great challenges. This paper is dedicated to discussing green communications of the air-ground integrated heterogeneous network (AGIHN). We first provide a brief introduction to the characteristics of AGIHN in 6G networks. Further, we analyze the challenges of green AGIHN from the aspects of green terrestrial networks and green aerial networks. Finally, several solutions to and key technologies of the green AGIHN are discussed.

Key words: air-ground integrated heterogeneous network, 6G, green communications

WU Huici, LI Hanjie, TAO Xiaofeng. Green Air-Ground Integrated Heterogeneous Network in 6G Era[J]. ZTE Communications, 2021, 19(1): 39-47.

Figures/Tables 2

References 63

1	ZHANG Z Q, XIAO Y, MA Z, et al. 6G wireless networks: vision, requirements, architecture, and key technologies [J]. IEEE vehicular technology magazine, 2019, 14(3): 28–41. DOI: 10.1109/MVT.2019.2921208 DOI
2	F⁃Cell technology from Nokia Bell Labs revolutionizes small cell deployment by cutting wires, costs and time [EB/OL]. (2016⁃10⁃03)[2020⁃12⁃09].
3	Launches world’s first EE 4G “AIR MAST” to connect red bull foxhunt mountain bike even in rural wales [EB/OL]. (2017⁃10⁃11)[2020⁃12⁃09].
4	FirstNet reaches over 1 million connections [EB/OL]. (2019⁃12⁃03)[2020⁃12⁃09].
5	ZHOU D, GAO S, LIU R Q, et al. Overview of development and regulatory aspects of high altitude platform system [J]. Intelligent and converged networks, 2020, 1(1): 58–78. DOI: 10.23919/ICN.2020.0004 DOI
6	AL⁃HOURANI A, KANDEEPAN S, LARDNER S. Optimal LAP altitude for maximum coverage [J]. IEEE wireless communications letters, 2014, 3(6): 569–572. DOI: 10.1109/LWC.2014.2342736 DOI
7	WIREN R. 5G and UAV use cases [EB/OL]. (2017⁃09⁃18)[2020⁃12⁃09].
8	SHARMA V, BENNIS M, KUMAR R. UAV⁃assisted heterogeneous networks for capacity enhancement [J]. IEEE communications letters, 2016, 20(6): 1207–1210. DOI: 10.1109/LCOMM.2016.2553103 DOI
9	QIU J F, GRACE D, DING G R, et al. Air⁃ground heterogeneous networks for 5G and beyond via integrating high and low altitude platforms [J]. IEEE wireless communications, 2019, 26(6): 140–148. DOI: 10.1109/MWC.0001.1800575 DOI
10	HWANG M H, CHA H R, JUNG S Y. Practical endurance estimation for minimizing energy consumption of multirotor unmanned aerial vehicles [J]. Energies, 2018, 11(9): 2221. DOI: 10.3390/en11092221 DOI
11	3GPP. Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; Study on Enhanced LTE Support for Aerial Vehicles: TR36.777 [R]. Sophia⁃Antipolis, France: 3GPP, 2017.
12	CHRIKI A, TOUATI H, SNOUSSI H, et al. Centralized cognitive radio based frequency allocation for UAVs communication [C]//15th International Wireless Communications & Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC). Tangier, Morocco: IEEE, 2019: 1674–1679. DOI: 10.1109/IWCMC.2019.8766481 DOI
13	WANG G Y, LIU Y J, QI X Y. Study on the propagation characteristics of 28GHz radio wave in outdoor microcellular [C]//Asia⁃Pacific Microwave Conference (APMC). Nanjing, China: IEEE, 2015: 1–3. DOI: 10.1109/APMC.2015.7413403 DOI
14	AHMED B, POTA H R, GARRATT M. Flight control of a rotary wing UAV using backstepping [J]. International journal of robust and nonlinear control, 2010, 20(6): 639–658. DOI: 10.1002/rnc.1458 DOI
15	CHOI H S, LEE S, RYU H, et al. Dynamics and simulation of the effects of wind on UAVs and airborne wind measurement [J]. Transactions of the Japan society for aeronautical and space sciences, 2015, 58(4): 187–192. DOI: 10.2322/tjsass.58.187 DOI
16	WU H C, WEN Y, ZHANG J Z, et al. Energy⁃efficient and secure air⁃to⁃ground communication with jittering UAV [J]. IEEE transactions on vehicular technology, 2020, 69(4): 3954–3967. DOI: 10.1109/TVT.2020.2971520 DOI
17	MUNOZ R, VILALTA R, CASELLAS R, et al. Integrated SDN/NFV management and orchestration architecture for dynamic deployment of virtual SDN control instances for virtual tenant networks [J]. IEEE/OSA journal of optical communications and networking, 2015, 7(11): B62–B70. DOI: 10.1364/JOCN.7.000B62 DOI
18	XILOURIS G K, BATISTATOS M C, ATHANASIADOU G E, et al. UAV⁃assisted 5G network architecture with slicing and virtualization [C]//IEEE Globecom Workshops (GC Wkshps). Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates: IEEE, 2018: 1–7. DOI: 10.1109/GLOCOMW.2018.8644408 DOI
19	WHITE K J S, DENNEY E, KNUDSON M D, et al. A programmable SDN+NFV⁃based architecture for UAV telemetry monitoring [C]//14th IEEE Annual Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC). Las Vegas, USA: IEEE, 2017: 522–527. DOI: 10.1109/CCNC.2017.7983162 DOI
20	HERMOSILLA A, ZARCA A M, BERNABE J B, et al. Security orchestration and enforcement in NFV/SDN⁃aware UAV deployments [J]. IEEE access, 2020, 8: 131779–131795. DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3010209 DOI
21	HERMOSILLA A, ZARCA A M, BERNABE J B, et al. Security orchestration and enforcement in NFV/SDN⁃aware UAV deployments [J]. IEEE access, 2020, 8: 131779–131795. DOI:10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3010209 DOI
22	NIE Y W, ZHAO J H, LIU J, et al. Energy⁃efficient UAV trajectory design for backscatter communication: a deep reinforcement learning approach [J]. China communications, 2020, 17(10): 129–141. DOI: 10.23919/JCC.2020.10.009 DOI
23	LIU T, CUI M, ZHANG G C, et al. 3D trajectory and transmit power optimization for UAV⁃enabled multi⁃link relaying systems [J]. IEEE transactions on green communications and networking, 8135, PP(99):1. DOI:10.1109/TGCN.2020.3048135 DOI
24	YIN S X, ZHAO Y F, LI L H, et al. UAV⁃assisted cooperative communications with power⁃splitting information and power transfer [J]. IEEE transactions on green communications and networking, 2019, 3(4): 1044–1057. DOI: 10.1109/TGCN.2019.2926131 DOI
25	WANG Y S, HONG Y W P, CHEN W T. Trajectory learning, clustering, and user association for dynamically connectable UAV base stations [J]. IEEE transactions on green communications and networking, 2020, 4(4): 1091–1105. DOI: 10.1109/TGCN.2020.3005290 DOI
26	LV Z, HAO J J, GUO Y J. Energy minimization for MEC⁃enabled cellular⁃connected UAV: trajectory optimization and resource scheduling [C]//IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops (INFOCOM WKSHPS). Toronto, Canada: IEEE, 2020: 478–483. DOI: 10.1109/INFOCOMWKSHPS50562.2020.9162853 DOI
27	SUN X, ANSARI N. Green cloudlet network: a distributed green mobile cloud network [J]. IEEE network, 2017, 31(1): 64–70. DOI: 10.1109/MNET.2017.1500293NM DOI
28	WANG Y T, SU Z, ZHANG N, et al. Learning in the air: secure federated learning for UAV⁃assisted crowdsensing [J]. IEEE transactions on network science and engineering, 4385, PP(99):1. DOI: 10.1109/TNSE.2020.3014385 DOI
29	CHEN Z, MA X Y, ZHANG B, et al. A survey on terahertz communications [J]. China communications, 2019, 16(2): 1–35. DOI: 10.12676/j.cc.2019.02.001 DOI
30	WU Q Q, ZHANG R. Towards smart and reconfigurable environment: intelligent reflecting surface aided wireless network [J]. IEEE communications magazine, 2020, 58(1): 106–112. DOI: 10.1109/MCOM.001.1900107 DOI
31	SONG D, SHIN W, LEE J. A maximum throughput design for wireless powered communications networks with IRS⁃NOMA [J]. IEEE wireless communications letters, 6722, PP(99):1. DOI: 10.1109/LWC.2020.3046722 DOI
32	ZHOU F S, YOU C S, ZHANG R. Delay⁃optimal scheduling for IRS⁃aided mobile edge computing [J]. IEEE wireless communications letters, 2189, PP(99):1. DOI: 10.1109/LWC.2020.3042189 DOI
33	FANG S S, CHEN G J, LI Y H. Joint optimization for secure intelligent reflecting surface assisted UAV networks [J]. IEEE wireless communications letters, 2021, 10(2): 276–280. DOI: 10.1109/LWC.2020.3027969 DOI
34	MOHAMED Z, AISSA S. Leveraging UAVs with intelligent reflecting surfaces for energy⁃efficient communications with cell⁃edge users [C]//IEEE International Conference on Communications Workshops (ICC Workshops). Dublin, Ireland: IEEE, 2020: 1–6. DOI: 10.1109/iccworkshops49005.2020.9145273 DOI
35	ZHANG J Z, CHEN Y, LIU Y X, et al. Spectrum knowledge and real⁃time observing enabled smart spectrum management [J]. IEEE access, 2020, 8: 44153–44162. DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2978005 DOI
36	ZHANG Y Y, FANG Z J. Dynamic double threshold spectrum sensing algorithm based on block chain [C]//3rd International Conference on Electronic Information Technology and Computer Engineering (EITCE). Xiamen, China: IEEE, 2019: 1090–1095. DOI: 10.1109/EITCE47263.2019.9094864 DOI
37	SUN X L, YANG W W, CAI Y M, et al. Physical layer security in millimeter wave SWIPT UAV⁃based relay networks [J]. IEEE access, 2019, 7: 35851–35862. DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2904856 DOI
38	LIU J X, XIONG K, LU Y, et al. Energy efficiency in secure IRS⁃aided SWIPT [J]. IEEE wireless communications letters, 2020, 9(11): 1884–1888. DOI: 10.1109/LWC.2020.3006837 DOI
39	WEBB M. Smart 2020: enabling the low carbon economy in the information age [R]. London, UK: The Climate Group, 2008.
40	ITU⁃T. Greenhouse gas emissions trajectories for the information and communication technology sector compatible with the UNFCCC paris agreement: L.1470 [R]. 2020
41	Verizon NEBSTM Compliance: Energy Efficiency Requirements for Telecommunications [EB/OL]. (2009⁃08⁃07)[2020⁃12⁃09].
42	GANDOTRA P, JHA R K, JAIN S. Green communication in next generation cellular networks: a survey [J]. IEEE access, 2017, 5: 11727–11758. DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2017.2711784 DOI
43	Huawei Technology Co., Ltd. 5G power white paper [R]. Shenzhen, China: Huawei, 2019
44	Daiwa Capital Markets. Asia mobile communication: let’s talk about 5G [R]. Hong Kong, China: Daiwa Capital Markets Hong Kong Limited, 2018
45	BERARDINELLI G, MOGENSEN P, ADEOGUN R O. 6G subnetworks for life⁃critical communication [C]//2nd 6G Wireless Summit (6G SUMMIT). Levi, Finland: IEEE, 2020: 1–5. DOI:10.1109/6GSUMMIT49458.2020.9083877 DOI
46	ZENG Q T, SUN Q, CHEN G, et al. Traffic prediction of wireless cellular networks based on deep transfer learning and cross⁃domain data [J]. IEEE access, 2020, 8: 172387–172397. DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3025210 DOI
47	ZHANG M Y, FU H H, LI Y, et al. Understanding urban dynamics from massive mobile traffic data [J]. IEEE transactions on big data, 2019, 5(2): 266–278. DOI: 10.1109/TBDATA.2017.2778721 DOI
48	Cisco. Cisco annual internet report [R]. San Jose, USA: Cisco Systems, Inc., 2020
49	Cisco. Cisco visual networking index (VNI) complete forecast update [R]. San Jose, USA: Cisco Systems, Inc., 2018
50	FRIEDLI M, KAUFMANN L, PAGANINI F, et al. Energy efficiency of the internet of things [R]. Luzern, Switzerland: Lucerne University of Applied Sciences, 2016
51	Enerdata. Portugal energy report [R]. Grenoble, France: Enerdata, 2020
52	FAA. FAA aerospace forecast fiscal years 2020⁃2040 [R]. Washington DC, USA: Federal Aviation Administration, 2020
53	BERTRAN E, SÀNCHEZ⁃CERDÀ A. On the tradeoff between electrical power consumption and flight performance in fixed⁃wing UAV autopilots [J]. IEEE transactions on vehicular technology, 2016, 65(11): 8832–8840. DOI:10.1109/TVT.2016.2601927 DOI
54	BOON M A, DRIJFHOUT A P, TESFAMICHAEL S. Comparison of a fixed⁃wing and multi⁃rotor UAV for environmental mapping applications: A case study [J]. ISPRS⁃international archives of the photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences, 2017, XLII⁃2/W6: 47–54. DOI: 10.5194/isprs-archives-xlii-2-w6-47-2017 DOI
55	CHAN C W, KAM T Y. A procedure for power consumption estimation of multi⁃rotor unmanned aerial vehicle [C]//Journal of Physics: Conference Series, Volume1509, 10th Asian⁃Pacific Conference on Aerospace Technology and Science & 4th Asian Joint Symposium on Aerospace Engineering (APCATS’2019 /AJSAE’2019). Bristol, UK: IOP Publishing, 2020, 1509(1): 012015
56	ABEYWICKRAMA H V, JAYAWICKRAMA B A, HE Y, et al. Comprehensive energy consumption model for unmanned aerial vehicles, based on empirical studies of battery performance [J]. IEEE access, 2018, 6: 58383–58394. DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2018.2875040 DOI
57	ZENG Y, ZHANG R. Energy⁃efficient UAV communication with trajectory optimization [J]. IEEE transactions on wireless communications, 2017, 16(6): 3747–3760. DOI: 10.1109/TWC.2017.2688328 DOI
58	ZENG Y, XU J, ZHANG R. Energy minimization for wireless communication with rotary⁃wing UAV [J]. IEEE transactions on wireless communications, 2019, 18(4): 2329–2345. DOI: 10.1109/TWC.2019.2902559 DOI
59	HU Y L, YUAN X P, XU J, et al. Optimal 1D trajectory design for UAV⁃enabled multiuser wireless power transfer [J]. IEEE transactions on communications, 2019, 67(8): 5674–5688. DOI: 10.1109/TCOMM.2019.2911294 DOI
60	AHMED S, CHOWDHURY M Z, JANG Y M. Energy⁃efficient UAV relaying communications to serve ground nodes [J]. IEEE communications letters, 2020, 24(4): 849–852. DOI: 10.1109/LCOMM.2020.2965120 DOI
61	YANG D C, WU Q Q, ZENG Y, et al. Energy tradeoff in ground⁃to⁃UAV communication via trajectory design [J]. IEEE transactions on vehicular technology, 2018, 67(7): 6721–6726. DOI: 10.1109/TVT.2018.2816244 DOI
62	HUA M, WANG Y, LI C G, et al. Energy⁃efficient optimization for UAV⁃aided cellular offloading [J]. IEEE wireless communications letters, 2019, 8(3): 769–772. DOI: 10.1109/LWC.2019.2891727 DOI
63	LI Z Y, HAO J L, LIU J, et al. An IoT⁃applicable access control model under double⁃layer blockchain [J]. IEEE transactions on circuits and systems II: Express briefs, 5031, PP(99):1. DOI: 10.1109/TCSII.2020.3045031 DOI

[1]	YANG Bei, LIANG Xin, LIU Shengnan, JIANG Zheng, ZHU Jianchi, SHE Xiaoming. Intelligent 6G Wireless Network with Multi-Dimensional Information Perception [J]. ZTE Communications, 2023, 21(2): 3-10.
[2]	LU Haitao, YAN Xincheng, ZHOU Qiang, DAI Jiulong, LI Rui. Key Intrinsic Security Technologies in 6G Networks [J]. ZTE Communications, 2022, 20(4): 22-31.
[3]	WANG Pengfei, SONG Wei, SUN Geng, WEI Zongzheng, ZHANG Qiang. Air-Ground Integrated Low-Energy Federated Learning for Secure 6G Communications [J]. ZTE Communications, 2022, 20(4): 32-40.
[4]	HOU Xiaolin, LI Xiang, WANG Xin, CHEN Lan, SUYAMA Satoshi. Some Observations and Thoughts about Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface Application for 5G Evolution and 6G [J]. ZTE Communications, 2022, 20(1): 14-20.
[5]	YUAN Yifei, GU Qi, WANG Anna, WU Dan, LI Ya. Recent Progress in Research and Development of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface [J]. ZTE Communications, 2022, 20(1): 3-13.