Breaking the Boundaries of Aerial Networks with Charging Stations.

Considering that cities are typically divided in residential and business districts, massive population migrations between different areas introduce considerable discrepancies in the traffic distribution. However, although novel technologies are constantly introduced to fulfill the 5G requirements, the current cellular networks raise some limitations due to their static deployment. Aerial networks with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that carry access points can flexibly overcome this issue by controlling this traffic effectively in an ad hoc manner, but their limited power storage is their major drawback. In this paper, we propose the use of solar-powered charging stations to satisfy the energy needs of UAVs and formulate a theoretic matching problem to ensure the best performance in terms of energy, communication, and safety. Then, we evaluate the network performance by comparing the coverage and utilization between the two scenarios: i) the static infrastructure, and ii) the aerial network, and we present useful insights regarding the benefits of aerial networks.