Ground-to-air wireless coverage extension for 6G: a triangular prism structure-based approach
Liu J Y, Sheng M, Li J D, et al
Sci China Inf Sci, 2024, 67(12): 224301
Stimulated by the requirements of passenger transport, cargo delivery, security monitoring, etc., the development of a low-altitude economy has been entering a new stage. Relying on the low-altitude airspace below 1000 m, the low-altitude economy is a comprehensive economic form, which is towed by various low-altitude flight activities of civil-manned and unmanned aerial vehicles. One key factor for the development of the low-altitude economy is to provide seamless three-dimensional (3D) coverage for low-altitude airspace in a cost-efficient way. However, the existing terrestrial mobile communications systems, including the fourth-generation (4G) and fifth-generation (5G) systems, are mainly designed to provide terrestrial coverage. Coverage extension is infeasible due to the inherent coverage structure and the downward-tilted antennas. Other approaches including using satellite or drone base stations also fall short of coverage extension. Specifically, the limitations on the available bandwidth and long-distance transmission in satellite coverage may be the bottlenecks to serving aerial users with the requirements of high transmission rate and low end-to-end latency. Besides, the limited flight time makes it difficult for drone base stations to provide long-time stable coverage. Since the main object of the low-altitude economy is the urban area with dense population distribution, it is an efficient way to enable ground-to-air (G2A) coverage extension of the terrestrial mobile communication system for 3D low-altitude airspace coverage in the future sixth-generation (6G) system.