Wireless communications technology has become an important part of our life that prepares to support advanced applications and services with extremely massive and variable traffic. With such increasingly unpredictable and non-uniform loading, even the novel fifth-generation (5G) wireless technology may require more consistent coverage and on-demand capacity. In this research, we envision advanced 3D network architectures that integrate terrestrial and non-terrestrial deployments as well as employ connected swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), nicknamed drones. We specifically emphasize extremely high frequency (mmWave) radio communications capabilities and conduct a comprehensive performance characterization of dynamic 3D network layouts with multi-hop mmWave mesh and multi-connectivity features. This analysis is based on a novel space-time mathematical methodology, which will help understand the system-level performance, as well as yield optimized technology development choices.

2019

2024