IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - January/February 2023 - 33

& UBIQUITOUS AND HIGH data rate connectivity
has become an indispensable aspect of human life.
Indeed, many contemporary paradigms, such as
smart cities and autonomous connected vehicles,
are becoming more and more ubiquitous. Therefore,
the ever-growing need for higher data rates
and better connectivity across highly challenging
scenarios and environments necessitates the adoption
of extraordinary technological solutions.
Recently, self-evolving networks (SENs)1 have
been proposed to facilitate autonomous network
management to reduce human intervention as
much as possible by considering the agility and
machine learning (ML)-based management aspects
of next generation wireless networks (NGWNs).
Integration of terrestrial, aerial, and satellite networks
to form a vertical heterogeneous network,
which can be considered as an evolving architecture,
has the potential to incorporate significant
agility into the NGWN infrastructure. However, network
management under such highly dynamic conditions
arises as a challenging research problem.
Within the framework of SENs, unmanned
aerial vehicle base stations (UAV-BSs) are designated
as highly dynamic infrastructure enablers
and their potential advantages are enormous. The
inherent availability of line-of-sight (LoS) links
between a UAV-BS and MUs can significantly
reduce thepath loss, which in turn leads to greater
coverage area and/or better channel capacity.
Unprecedented mobility associated with UAV-BSs
enable the network as a whole to behave like a
highly dynamic entity (see Figure 1), which is one
of the main pillars of SENs. Hence, it is possible to
restructure the network on an unprecedented
scale and level so that it can be possible to create
an extremely flexible and reliable mobile communication
infrastructure.
UAV-BSs can be utilized to augment communications
infrastructure in locations (especially
in metropolitan areas) where there may be
significant short-term peaks in demand, such as
during crowded entertainment and sporting
events. Providing reliable and flexible emergency
communications through UAV-BSs in conjunction
with the surviving communications infrastructure
for search and rescue operations in disasterstricken
areas is also an important application
scenario.2 There are many other use cases where
the utilization of UAV-BSs can improve the
overall system performance and extend system
capabilities.3,4
The third generation partnership project
(3GPP) has already defined an on-board radio
access node (UxNB) in recognition of the great
potential of UAV-BSs (3GPP Release 17). Indeed,
the literature on the efficient utilization of
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as an integral
part of NGWNs is rich. Applications of UAVs
in NGWNs are envisioned to revolutionize all
aspects of telecommunications technology profoundly.
However, considering the fact that the
utilization of UAVs in telecommunications is still
in its infancy phase, it appears that extensive further
research is required to achieve technological
maturity for UAV-BSs.
Due to the three-dimensional space, high
mobility, and large service area, the channel
between a UAV-BS and MU can vary significantly.
For this reason, optimizing a single instance of
the communication scenario would be a too conservative
and an unrealistic approach. Instead,
an autonomous UAV-BS should be able to adapt
itself according to the dynamic characteristics
of the communication medium and user mobility
by incorporating the relevant temporal and spatial
variables into the decision-making process.
While determining the trajectory of a UAV-BS
(and in any real-life problem solving approach), it
would be unwise to assume an ideal environment.
For it is highly unlikely that the channel estimation
would be precise and mobility prediction error
Figure 1. Illustration of a representative communications scenario.
January/February 2023
33
IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - January/February 2023

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