Air-to-Ground-Integrated Wireless Information-Centric Networks with mmWave Communications: Long-Term Operational Testing and Aerial Node Evaluation

This paper presents an air-to-ground integrated wireless information-centric network framework for smart-city applications, an ongoing research project. The work aims to establish a new co-creative digital twin platform on the basis of a smart-city-as-a-service. We previously developed test fields and demonstrated preliminary feasibility, and the proposed scheme features IEEE 802.11 ad/ay-compliant wireless communications in the millimeter-wave-band for the air interface and an integrated air-to-ground wireless network by using unmanned aerial vehicles as airborne nodes. In this paper, we evaluate the scheme's feasibility through long-term operational testing and air-to-ground communication testing. In the on-site experiments, we evaluate the scheme's network performance, thereby identifying and clarifying the issues to be solved to deploy the system in a real-world city. Nevertheless, the results confirmed that the proposed method is applicable to practical operations.