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

Abstract

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.

System Assessment of WUSN Using NB-IoT UAV-Aided Networks in Potato Crops

“…This field is one of the most notorious research directions ranging from optimization of the placement based on energy, traffic or coverage to power-constrained networks. Other works like [51]- [53] include the analysis of the access and backhaul network performance. However, specific studies involving only M2M and IoT devices in agricultural scenarios are scarce.…”

“…We propose a UAV-aided network to support IoT agricultural applications and data collection, as presented in Fig 1. It is based in general architectures used in [1], [38], [44], [53]. The core network (CN) or facility, is the network part that allows access to the internet.…”

“…This band is envisioned as a promising band because it is not broadly allocated, and its use could overcome the limited available spectrum from other bands. Specifics of the backhaul radio parameters are presented in table 2 and a detailed analysis could be found in [53]. The orange arrow describes the IoT access network.…”

“…The tool employed in this evaluation is based on the one used in [53], [76]. This tool, implemented in java, deploys a UABS-aided network.…”

“…The power usage in the IoT system is studied in two parts. The first one is the study of the power consumed by the aerial network, which includes the access and backhaul network consumption, plus the power consumption of the drone's flight [53], [81]. The second part is the study of the WUSN, in specific the life span of the deployed sensors.…”