mmBAC: Location-aided mmWave Backhaul Management for UAV-based Aerial Cells

Abstract

Mobile cells are seen as an enabler of more flexible and elastic services for next-generation wireless networks, making it possible to provide ad hoc coverage in failure scenarios and scale up the network capacity during peak traffic hours and temporary events. When mounted on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), mobile cells require a high-capacity, low-latency wireless backhaul. Although mmWaves can meet such data-rate demand, they suffer from high-latency link establishment, due to the need to transmit and receive with highly directional beams to compensate for the high isotropic path loss. In this paper, we review the benefits of side-information-aided beam management and present a GPS-aided beam tracking algorithm for UAV-based aerial cells. We prototype the proposed algorithm on a mmWave aerial link using a DJI M600 Pro and 60 GHz radios and prove its effectiveness in reducing the average link establishment latency by 66% with respect to state-of-the-art non-aided schemes.