Toward Digitalizing the Wireless Environment: A Unified A2G Information and Energy Delivery Framework Based on Binary Channel Feature Map

Elevating base stations (BSs) in the air, forming what are called aerial platforms (APs), has recently been treated as a promising solution to the problems of coverage, deployment and cost savings in mobile networks. Unlike terrestrial transmission with fixed BSs, AP-assisted air-to-ground (A2G) communications require joint optimization of the transmit parameters and AP service position, which is challenging due to the unknown propagation environment in the overall flying area. In this paper, a novel binary channel feature map (CFM) concept is proposed to grant the AP knowledge of the global propagation environment. With the assistance of the binary CFM, a unified A2G information and energy delivery framework is proposed, which includes three modules, i.e., a transmit optimization and user satisfaction evaluation module, an offline AP position planning module and an online AP position adjustment module. These modules operate coordinately to jointly perform beamforming matrix optimization for information delivery, transmit covariance optimization for energy delivery, and three-dimension AP service position planning and real-time adjustment. The simulation results reveal that the proposed framework can achieve higher user satisfaction level and lower outage probability, and can result in great savings of battery power or fuel in the AP when compared with reference schemes.

Automated summary

This paper proposes a novel binary channel feature map (CFM) concept to address the challenge of unknown propagation environment in aerial platform (AP)-assisted air-to-ground (A2G) communications. With the assistance of binary CFM, a unified framework for A2G information and energy delivery is proposed, achieving optimization of transmit parameters, AP position, and efficient delivery of information and energy.