UAV Assisted Heterogeneous Wireless Networks: Potentials and Challenges

doi:10.3969/j.issn.1673-5188.2018.02.002

ZTE Communications ›› 2018, Vol. 16 ›› Issue (2): 3-8.DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1673-5188.2018.02.002

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UAV Assisted Heterogeneous Wireless Networks: Potentials and Challenges

LI Tongxin, SHENG Min, LYU Ruiling, LIU Junyu, LI Jiandong

State Key Laboratory of Integrated Service Networks, Xidian University, Xi’an, Shanxi 710071, China

Received:2018-01-14 Online:2018-06-25 Published:2019-12-12
About author:LI Tongxin (txli@stu.xidian.edu.cn) received the B.Eng. degree in communication and information systems from Xidian University, China in 2016. She is currently pursuing the M.A.Sc. degree with the State Key Laboratory of Integrated Service Networks, Institute of Information and Science, Xidian University. Her research interests include performance evaluation for UAV assisted cellular network and small cell caching in ultra-dense wireless networks.|SHENG Min (msheng@mail.xidian.edu.cn) received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in communication and information systems from Xidian University, China in 1997 and 2000, respectively. She is currently a full professor with the State Key Laboratory of Integrated Service Networks, Institute of Information Science, Xidian University. Her general research interests include mobile ad hoc networks, 5G mobile communication systems, and satellite communications networks. She was awarded as Changjiang Scholar by Ministry of Education, China.|LYU Ruiling (rllv@stu.xidian.edu.cn) received the B.Eng. degree from Inner Mongolia University, China in 2017. She is currently pursuing the M.A.Sc. degree with the State Key Laboratory of Integrated Service Networks, Institute of Information and Science, Xidian University. Her research interests include interference management and performance evaluation for UAV assisted cellular network, as well as ultra-dense wireless networks.|LIU Junyu (junyuliu@xidian.edu.cn) received the B.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees in communication and information systems from Xidian University, China in 2007 and 2016, respectively. He is currently a lecturer/postdoc with the State Key Laboratory of Integrated Service Networks, Institute of Information and Science, Xidian University. His research interests include interference management and performance evaluation of wireless heterogeneous networks and ultra-dense wireless networks.|LI Jiandong (jdli@mail.xidian.edu.cn) received the B.E., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in communications engineering from Xidian University, China in 1982, 1985 and 1991, respectively. He has been a faculty member of the School of Telecommunications Engineering, Xidian University since 1985, and now serves as the Vice President of Xidian University. He was awarded as Distinguished Young Researcher from NSFC and Changjiang Scholar by Ministry of Education, China. His major research interests include wireless communication theory, cognitive radio and signal processing.

Abstract

Abstract:

By fully exploiting the spatial resources, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are expected to serve as an efficient complementary to terrestrial wireless communication system to provide enhanced coverage and reliable connectivity to ground users. With the growing deployment of units such as small cell base stations (BSs), however, the incurred severe interference may hinder the potential benefits of the integration of UAVs. In this paper, we first discuss the intrinsic features and potential benefits of UAVs and introduce the architecture of multi-layer heterogeneous wireless network (MHetNet), in which traditional wireless network is assisted by UAVs. Then, an explicit discussion on the factors that limit the performance of MHetNet is presented, including the UAV topology, UAV density, and spectrum sharing of UAV and terrestrial networks. We use simulation results to investigate the performance of MHetNet in terms of spatial throughput (ST). It is shown that, together with the densities of UAV and terrestrial networks, the altitude of UAV is a limiting factor that should be optimized to improve the ST of MHetNet.

Key words: unmanned aerial vehicles, heterogeneous network, ultra-dense network

LI Tongxin, SHENG Min, LYU Ruiling, LIU Junyu, LI Jiandong. UAV Assisted Heterogeneous Wireless Networks: Potentials and Challenges[J]. ZTE Communications, 2018, 16(2): 3-8.

Figures/Tables 5

Figure 1. The integration of a multi-layer heterogeneous wireless network.

Figure 2. ST varying with under different pathloss exponent α0. ===For the system settings, we set λ BS = 10 BS / k m 2 and λ UAV = 5 BS / k m 2 .

Figure 3. ST varying with user density under different BS and UAV densities. In simulations, the UAV density is set as λUAV=0.5λBS.

Figure 4. ST as a function of user density under different ΔhUAV. (For system settings, we set λBS=1×104BS/km2and λUAV=5×103BS/km2.)

Table 1 Critical altitude with BS density

BS density (/km²)	Critical altitude (m)
1 × 10²	45.2
1 × 10³	22.3
1 × 10⁴	10.2
1 × 10⁵	3.9

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UAV Assisted Heterogeneous Wireless Networks: Potentials and Challenges

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