Cellular Communications Using Aerial Platforms

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the study of cellular communications using aerial platforms (APs). A set of key equations is derived that quantify the coverage area on the ground as a function of AP elevation, the operation of the adaptive multibeam antenna on the AP, and the formulation of contiguous terrestrial cells and their shapes. Specifically, we consider the deployment of an AP to provide terrestrial mobile radio communications using the universal mobile telecommunication system operating in its wide-band code-division multiple-access mode. Calculations are made of the number of users versus E_b/N_o for different service rates. Multi-tiered cellular structures having cells of different size that are steerable with the offered teletraffic are examined. The array structure to achieve this is identified. The preliminary results shows that an AP at a height of 21 km covers an area of radius 517 km. Up to 21 users per cell with a service rate of 8 kb/s can be accommodated in the 2.2-GHz band. These services can be provided within an area of radius 70 km with transmitted powers of less than 1 W. High system capacity is proved to be possible by constructing cells of radius as small as 100 m using square planar arrays with dimensions of less than 12 m x 12 m. The AP system provides high capacity and Doppler frequency shifts that only originate from roving mobiles.

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