Energy efficient cooperative strategies in hybrid aerial-terrestrial networks for emergencies

Aerial telecommunications networks based on Low Altitude Platforms (LAPs) are expected to optimally meet the urgent needs of emergency relief and recovery operations for tackling large scale natural disasters. The energy efficient operation of such networks is important given the fact that the entire network infrastructure including the battery operated ground terminals, exhibit requirements to operate under power constrained situations. In this paper, we show that the cooperation between mobile terrestrial terminals on the ground could improve the energy efficiency in the uplink depending on the temporal behavior of the terrestrial and the aerial uplink channels. We consider cognitive context aware capabilities that could be utilized to improve the overall lifetime of the mobile ground terminals by dynamically adapting between direct and cooperative relay links. We also discuss a novel network architecture constituted of an integrated and highly dynamic multi-purpose aerial-terrestrial communications infrastructure that can be contextually extended with fast-deploying aerial platforms for emergency communications.