Aerial-Terrestrial Communications: Terrestrial Cooperation and Energy-Efficient Transmissions to Aerial-Base Stations

Hybrid aerial-terrestrial communication networks based on Low Altitude Platforms (LAPs) are expected to optimally meet the urgent communication needs of emergency relief and recovery operations for tackling large scale natural disasters. The energy-efficient operation of such networks is important given the fact that the entire network infrastructure, including the battery operated ground terminals, exhibits requirements to operate under power-constrained situations. In this paper, we discuss the design and evaluation of an adaptive cooperative scheme intended to extend the survivability of the battery operated aerial-terrestrial communication links. We propose and evaluate a real-time adaptive cooperative transmission strategy for dynamic selection between direct and cooperative links based on the channel conditions for improved energy efficiency. We show that the cooperation between mobile terrestrial terminals on the ground could improve the energy efficiency in the uplink depending on the temporal behavior of the terrestrial and the aerial uplink channels. The corresponding delay in having cooperative (relay-based) communications with relay selection is also addressed. The simulation analysis corroborates that the adaptive transmission technique improves the overall energy efficiency of the network whilst maintaining low latency enabling real time applications.