Efficient Highways Coverage using High Altitude Platforms

This paper proposes a novel beamforming technique for the high altitude platforms (HAPs) mobile communications to generate adaptive radio coverage worm-shaped cells covering the main highways which carry a heavy traffic of mobile users. This technique is based on pattern summation of individual low- sidelobe narrow beams - which constitute the desired cell pattern - weighted by an adaptive amplitude correcting function. The new shaped cell differs from the conventional hexagonal or elliptical cells as it follows the curvatures of the highway for long distances, therefore it has an important role in reducing the frequent handoff and signaling traffic of location updating from moving users over long highways.