High altitude platform station (HAPS), which is deployed in the stratosphere at an altitude of 20-50 kilometres, has attracted much attention in recent years due to their large footprint, line-of-sight links, and fixed position relative to the Earth. Compared with existing network infrastructure, HAPS has a much larger coverage area than terrestrial base stations and is much closer than satellites to the ground users. Besides small-cells and macro-cells, a HAPS can offer one mega-cell, which can complement legacy networks in 6G and beyond wireless systems. This paper explores potential use cases and discusses relevant open challenges of integrating HAPS into legacy networks, while also suggesting some solutions to these challenges. The cumulative density functions of spectral efficiency of the integrated network and cell-edge users are studied and compared with terrestrial network. The results show the capacity gains achieved by the integrated network are beneficial to cell-edge users. Furthermore, the advantages of a HAPS for backhauling aerial base stations are demonstrated by the simulation results.
翻译:高空平台站(HAPS)最近引起了广泛关注,它们部署在距离地球20-50公里的平流层中,具有大范围覆盖、直视链路和固定位置等优势。 与现有的网络基础设施相比,HAPS覆盖范围比地面基站大得多,并且比卫星更接近地面用户。 除了小型基站和宏基站外,HAPS还可以提供一个超大型基站,可以在6G及其以上无线系统中补充传统网络。 本文探讨了将HAPS整合到传统网络中的潜在用例,并讨论相关的开放挑战,同时提出了一些解决方案。 研究了集成网络和边缘用户频谱效率的累积密度函数,并将其与地面网络进行比较。 结果表明,集成网络实现的容量增益对边缘用户是有益的。 此外,通过模拟结果证明了使用HAPS作为后向链路连接的空中基站的优势。