Aerial Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface-Assisted Integrated Access and Backhaul Networks

In this paper, we develop the joint user association and the power allocation scheme for aerial RIS-assisted IAB networks. In this networks, the t-BS provides both the wireless backhaul link for U-BS and wireless access links for aerial users using the aerial RIS. An aerial user can be served by a t-BS or an U-BS. We formulate the problem to maximize the sum rate of aerial users by optimizing the user association and transmit power allocation of t-BS. Since the problem is a mixed-integer problem, we decompose it into two subproblems. After obtaining optimal solutions of subproblems, we propose an iterative algorithm to obtain the optimal association and power allocation of t-BS. Finally, through numerical results, we verify that the our proposed algorithm achieves higher sum rate of aerial users than a baseline scheme. We also investigate the impact of network parameters such as locations of U-BS and RIS on the sum rate and the RIS configuration.