Performance Evaluation of Direct-Link Backhaul for UAV-Aided Emergency Networks

Sensors

German Castellanos¹  Margot Deruyck²  Wout Joseph²  Luc Martens² 

[1] Department of Electronics Engineering, Colombian School of Engineering, Bogota 111166, Colombia;Department of Information Technology, IMEC-Ghent University, 9052 Ghent, Belgium;

关键词: UABS;    backhaul;    UAV;    disaster scenarios;    millimeter wave;   

DOI  :  10.3390/s19153342

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Today’s wireless networks provide us reliable connectivity. However, if a disaster occurs, the whole network could be out of service and people cannot communicate. Using a fast deployable temporally network by mounting small cell base stations on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could solve the problem. Yet, this raises several challenges. We propose a capacity-deployment tool to design the backhaul network for UAV-aided networks and to evaluate the performance of the backhaul network in a realistic scenario in the city center of Ghent, Belgium. This tool assigns simultaneously resources to the ground users—access network—and to the backhaul network, taking into consideration backhaul capacity and power restrictions. We compare three types of backhaul scenarios using a 3.5 GHz link, 3.5 GHz with carrier aggregation (CA) and the 60 GHz band, considering three different types of drones. The results showed that an optimal UAV flight height (80 m) could satisfy both access and backhaul networks; however, full coverage was difficult to achieve. Finally, we discuss the influence of the flight height and the number of requesting users concerning the network performance and propose an optimal configuration and new mechanisms to improve the network capacity, based on realistic restrictions.

【 授权许可】

Unknown