Airplane-Aided Integrated Next-Generation Networking

A high-rate yet low-cost air-to-ground (A2G) communication backbone is conceived for integrating the space and terrestrial network by harnessing the opportunistic assistance of the passenger planes or high altitude platforms (HAPs) as mobile base stations (BSs) and millimetre wave communication. The airliners act as the network-provider for the terrestrial users while relying on satellite backhaul. Three different beamforming techniques relying on a large-scale planar array are used for transmission by the airliner/HAP for achieving a high directional gain, hence minimizing the interference among the users. Furthermore, approximate spectral efficiency (SE) and area spectral efficiency (ASE) expressions are derived and quantified for diverse system parameters.