Enhancing Millimeter Wave Cellular Networks via UAV-Borne Aerial IRS Swarms

Combining intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) with an unmanned aerial vehicle to form aerial IRS (AIRS) swarms is an effective way to enable panoramic full-angle reflection, high configuration flexibility and reliable air-ground line-of-sight (LoS) connections, especially in millimeter wave (mmWave) bands. In this paper, we use stochastic geometry to provide a performance analytical framework for AIRS swarm-assisted mmWave cellular networks, where each base station (BS) has an AIRS swarm to assist downlink communications. To capture the swarm property of AIRSs and the dependence between AIRS swarms and BSs, the AIRSs in each swarm are uniformly and randomly distributed in a finite circular area centered on their assisting BS. Incorporating different LoS/non-LoS propagation characteristics, a two-step user association policy is proposed to pursue an efficient communication link between the BS and its users with the assistance of AIRS swarm. We derive the coverage probability and area spectral efficiency (ASE) by considering three types of interference which are directly from interfering BSs, reflected by active AIRSs of other swarms and reflected by the assisting AIRS for the typical user, respectively. The results reveal that AIRS swarms enhance both coverage and ASE performance and have the optimal height and density that maximize the coverage probability in mmWave cellular networks.