Field Experiment of a Dynamic Area Optimization Algorithm Using a Cylindrical Antenna for HAPS

High-Altitude Platform Stations (HAPSs) are attracting much attention as novel mobile communication platforms for ultra-wide coverage areas and disaster-resilient networks. In a service area, the distribution of users differs from location to location; therefore, cell configuration optimization is required for non-uniform user distributions to deliver a better communication service. The problem is an increased number of parameters because each cell requires different antenna parameters for a non-uniform user distribution compared to a uniform user distribution. To address this problem, we proposed a dynamic cell optimization algorithm using the genetic algorithm (GA). In this paper, we implement the dynamic cell optimization algorithm in a cylindrical antenna that has been developed so far and conduct a field experiment to show its functionality. Furthermore, we also conducted another experiment to show the effect of the footprint fixation technique on moving cell issues caused by the movement of aircraft by mounting the cylindrical antenna on a tethered balloon.