Using Mobility for Agility: Enhancing Wireless Networks with Aerial Access Nodes and User Involvement

Considering numerous futuristic applications that will be enabled by wireless networks, one may wonder the essence of the next evolution in wireless networks. Recently, concepts and technologies such as polar codes, wireless network virtualization, millimeter wave communications, and non-orthogonal multiple access have emerged as new enablers. They provide promising solutions for significant problems by enhancing capacity, flexibility, and spectrum usage. However, they cannot address precisely the most needed new capability to handle diverse applications without relying on to gross over-engineering: Agility. This study proposes a new solution to dramatically improve agility without leaning on over-engineering: Using mobility for agility, where the inherent support of wireless networks for user terminal mobility is used to support the mobility of access points. In addition, we propose to influence the user demand in space and time to flexibly shape the network from both sink and source perspectives. We propose the spatial network configuration (SNC) scheme, which utilizes drone-base- stations (drone-BSs) to re-configure topology of access points, and user-in-the-loop (UIL) to influence demand of users. Drone-BSs are shifting paradigms of heterogeneous wireless networks by providing radically flexible deployment opportunities. On the other hand, their limited endurance and potential high cost increase the importance of utilizing drone-BSs efficiently. Therefore, we thoroughly investigate efficient utilization of drone- BSs from placement methods to refinements on air-to-ground channel modelling. To further exploit drone-BSs, we influence locations of users via the UIL method, which aims at influencing mobility of the users by offering incentives. Finally, we investigate the SNC scheme with a holistic approach and propose the drone management framework. We show that the integration methods severely affect the network performance when wireless access virtualization is applied. Furthermore, we survey the latest developments in 3GPP 5G Release-16 standardization to discuss the capabilities and shortcomings of current and prospective wireless networks to integrate drone-BSs efficiently. All in all, this study shows that it is time to re-imagine future wireless networks in three dimensions.