Modelling and Planning Robust and Efficient Wireless Networks for Outdoor Dense Urban Coverage

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The proposed research uses innovative mathematical and computational techniques to study and design systems for providing robust and efficient wireless coverage to dense urban areas. We use freely available real building and cellular tower locations in order to test our concepts with more realism, which will allow us to make more accurate assessments of the cost of different technologies and system designs, and then find good system designs that work well in the complex dense urban setting.******- Small cells, and operation at millimeter-wave frequencies (28-300 GHz), are two essential technologies considered for future (post-2020) cellular networks to provide gigabit wireless access at low cost and power consumption to dense urban areas. The last five years have seen a lot of research concepts in how to deploy these technologies at the system level. By studying the wireless propagation in cities using urban maps, and designing algorithms for planning a large number of small cells on these maps, we will be able to assess the cost and capacity of these systems, and find the most optimal system designs . Small cells are also desirable because they reduce the power that a handheld device needs to transmit back to its cellular tower: this results in less wireless power transmitted into the body (greatly alleviating cellular health concerns, particularly during voice calls) and also prolonging the battery charge of the device. ***- The cell switch-off (CSO) concept has been a topic of research in green communications, and consists of switching off some cellular towers and part of the network during times of low usage (e.g., late at night, during working hours in suburban areas, in the evening in industrial parks, etc.). Finding good strategies to decide which cells to switch off when is an ongoing research topic. CSO is expected to reduce the energy consumption and equipment wear for the operator, with savings passed to the subscribers, and a lower environmental impact. Our research aims at designing simple and practical CSO strategies that apply to both current and future cellular networks. The benefits of this project could already be seen in the next few years.***- Augmenting cellular networks with flying drone cells. This idea is complementary to CSO: While current systems are over-engineered to provide wireless coverage in peak usage scenarios (and thus are very under-utilized most of the time), we wish to investigate whether it is possible to use a smaller ground network with lower wireless capacity, and augment the ground network with some flying drones used as cellular towers for short durations (a few hours) during peak times (daily peak hours; during parades, festivals, sports events; in emergency situations; etc.). This is a more far-reaching concept; our research will focus on studying where and how many drones to deploy in order to maximize their wireless coverage together jointly with the coverage of the ground network.