Coverage Enhancement in Dynamic Aerial-Terrestrial Integrated Networks

Integrating aerial base stations (ABSs) with terrestrial base stations (TBSs) represents a promising architecture for future networks. However, challenges arise from the ABS mobility and complex interference, leading to degradation in the coverage performance, including both the average coverage quality and coverage stability. To address these challenges, we investigate the average coverage quality and coverage stability via the first- and second-order statistical properties of network spatial throughput, respectively. Our findings reveal that the inappropriate ABS deployment, especially the antenna beamwidth, causes the average coverage quality deterioration due to the co- and cross-layer interference surge induced by the overlapping coverage between ABSs and TBSs. Additionally, coverage stability experiences degradation due to the ABS mobility, particularly exacerbated by factors such as the large deployment density and circling radius as well as the small flight height and antenna beamwidth of ABSs. Moreover, it is demonstrated that there exists an optimal ABS antenna beamwidth maximizing the coverage performance. On this account, we propose an antenna beamwidth optimization algorithm as well as a time-efficient but low performance loss alternative antenna beamwidth optimization strategy, aimed at mitigating the overlapping coverage-induced interference and reducing the ABS mobility-induced impact, both of which are validated through numerical results.