Aerial Base Stations for Global Connectivity: Is It a Feasible and Reliable Solution?

Even though achieving global connectivity represents one of the main goals of 5G and beyond wireless networks, exurban areas are still suffering frequent outages because of the lack of proper telecom infrastructures, which are often available only in urban areas. Indeed, cellular network design is usually capacity driven, and thus the densities of base stations (BSs) follow mostly population and especially revenue densities. Contextually, we focus on one of the most promising solutions to provide sufficient and reliable coverage in far-flung areas: aerial base stations (ABSs), which consist of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) carrying cellular BS equipment. In this article, we extensively discuss the problem of bridging what is called the urban–rural digital divide (i.e., the connectivity gap between urban and rural areas) from various perspectives. First, we showcase various alternative solutions and compare conventional terrestrial networks with aerial networks from a techno-economic point of view. Then, we highlight the topological aspects of rural environments and explain how they can affect the actual design of cellular networks. In addition, we investigate both the coverage probability and the reliability of the communication links via simulations, proving that the integration of ABSs can be quite promising in a 6G perspective. Finally, we propose two original extensions of our case study as open problems.