Study of Optimal Base Station Deployment for UAM Operations in an Urban Environment Based on a Genetic Algorithm

In this paper, we propose a method for determining the optimal base station deployment to establish a stable communication environment for urban air mobility (UAM) operation in urban areas. To realistically model the UAM operating environment, we utilize DEM files that include data on terrain and buildings. Furthermore, the radiation patterns of the BS’s antenna are generated according to the 3GPP-standard, and the receiver antenna patterns are obtained through analysis of the UAM’s mounted antenna. The proposed method uses binary chromosomes to determine the locations of BSs and the orientations of the antennas. A genetic algorithm is then used to determine the optimal deployment of the base stations. When applying the proposed method to optimize BS deployment in the UAM corridor (area of approximately 5.4 km<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${}^{\mathbf {2}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>), the optimization process resulted in the deployment of two base stations at 3.5 GHz, achieving an average received power of −61.36 dBm across the corridor. At 5.4 GHz, three base stations are deployed, with an average received power of −63.74 dBm. To validate the reliability of the simulation, measurements are conducted in a real urban environment, comparing the results from measurement, theory, and simulation. The received power values obtained from measurement, theory, and simulation are −110.21 dBm, −110.82 dBm, and −110.38 dBm, respectively. These results demonstrate that the proposed BS deployment method can be used to establish a stable communication environment in a real UAM corridor.