Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB) Communications in Wireless Cellular Networks

An integrated access and backhaul (IAB) network architecture can enable flexible and fast deployment of next-generation cellular networks. However, mutual interference between access and backhaul links, small inter-site distance and spatial dynamics of user distribution pose major challenges in the practical deployment of IAB networks. To tackle these problems, we leverage the flying capabilities of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as hovering IAB-nodes and propose an interference management algorithm to maximize the overall sum rate of the IAB network. In particular, we jointly optimize the user and base station associations, the downlink power allocations for access and backhaul transmissions, and the spatial configurations of UAVs. We consider two spatial configuration modes of UAVs: distributed UAVs and drone antenna array (DAA), and show how they are intertwined with the spatial distribution of ground users. Our numerical results show that the proposed algorithm achieves an average of 2.9× and 6.7× gains in the received downlink signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) and overall network sum rate, respectively. Finally, the numerical results reveal that UAVs cannot only be used for coverage improvement but also for capacity boosting in IAB cellular networks

Integrating Drones and Wireless Power Transfer into Beyond 5G Networks

As fifth generation (5G) standards have been established and 5G commercial products are just around the corner, both academia and industry have started to look at requirements for beyond 5G networks. Network flexibility and long battery life are among the key requirements for beyond 5G wireless communication systems. These critical requirements, which have not been sufficiently addressed in the previous generations, are the focus of this thesis. The first half of this thesis explores two important use cases of drones to provide flexible communication networks. First, the performance of a cellular network with underlay drone cell for temporary events inside a stadium is studied. Using stochastic geometry, a general analytical framework is proposed to analyze the uplink and the downlink coverage probabilities for both the aerial and the terrestrial systems. Our results show that for urban environment and dense urban environment, the drone is best deployed at a low height (e.g., 200 m or lower), regardless of the distance between the center of the stadium and the terrestrial base station. However, for suburban environment and high-rise urban environment, the best drone altitude varies. Second, the performance of emergency information dissemination in public safety scenarios using drone is studied. A drone-assisted multihop multicast device-to-device (D2D) network is considered, where an emergency alert message broadcasted by a drone at the first time slot is multicasted by the D2D users that have successfully received the message through multihop. The impact of different system parameters on the link and the network performance is investigated. Our results demonstrate that a higher drone altitude provides better link and network coverage probabilities and lower mean local delay. Under practical setups, the cell edge user located 2 km from the ground projection of the drone has a link coverage probability around 90% after 5 time slots and a mean local delay of 2.32 time slots with a drone height as low as 200 m. The second half of this thesis investigates wireless power transfer networks. Specifically, the use of power beacons in a millimeter wave wireless ad hoc network is considered, where transmitters adopt the harvest-then-transmit protocol. First, the characteristic of the aggregate received power from power beacons is analyzed and the lognormal distribution is found to provide the best complementary cumulative distribution function approximation compared to other distributions considered in the literature. Then, a tractable model with discrete transmit power for each transmitter is proposed to compute the channel coverage probability and the total coverage probability. Our results show that our model provides a good accuracy and reveal the impact of different system parameters on the total coverage probability. Our results also illustrate that under practical setups, for power beacon transmit power of 50 dBm and transmitters with maximum transmit power between 20 - 40 dBm, which are safe for human exposure, the total coverage probability is around 90%. Thus, it is feasible and safe to power transmitters in a millimeter wave ad hoc network using power beacons

A Comprehensive Overview on 5G-and-Beyond Networks with UAVs: From Communications to Sensing and Intelligence

Due to the advancements in cellular technologies and the dense deployment of cellular infrastructure, integrating unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) into the fifth-generation (5G) and beyond cellular networks is a promising solution to achieve safe UAV operation as well as enabling diversified applications with mission-specific payload data delivery. In particular, 5G networks need to support three typical usage scenarios, namely, enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC), and massive machine-type communications (mMTC). On the one hand, UAVs can be leveraged as cost-effective aerial platforms to provide ground users with enhanced communication services by exploiting their high cruising altitude and controllable maneuverability in three-dimensional (3D) space. On the other hand, providing such communication services simultaneously for both UAV and ground users poses new challenges due to the need for ubiquitous 3D signal coverage as well as the strong air-ground network interference. Besides the requirement of high-performance wireless communications, the ability to support effective and efficient sensing as well as network intelligence is also essential for 5G-and-beyond 3D heterogeneous wireless networks with coexisting aerial and ground users. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive overview of the latest research efforts on integrating UAVs into cellular networks, with an emphasis on how to exploit advanced techniques (e.g., intelligent reflecting surface, short packet transmission, energy harvesting, joint communication and radar sensing, and edge intelligence) to meet the diversified service requirements of next-generation wireless systems. Moreover, we highlight important directions for further investigation in future work.Comment: Accepted by IEEE JSA