An Edge Computing Empowered Radio Access Network With UAV-Mounted FSO Fronthaul and Backhaul: Key Challenges and Approaches

One promising approach to address the supply-demand mismatch between the terrestrial infrastructure and the temporary and/or unexpected traffic demands is to leverage the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technologies. Motivated by the recent advancement of UAV technologies and retromodulator based free space optical communication, we propose a novel edge-computing empowered radio access network architecture where the fronthaul and backhaul links are mounted on the UAVs for rapid event response and flexible deployment. The implementation of hardware and networking technologies for the proposed architecture are investigated. Due to the limited payload and endurance as well as the high mobility of UAVs, research challenges related to the communication resource management and recent research progress are reported.