A paper published in Scientific Reports proposes a 6G Internet-of-Things network that links ground infrastructure with aircraft-like relays: one grid-powered base station, four drones, and a stratospheric high-altitude platform.
Each layer would carry a programmable radio-signal reflector, known as a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), to steer signals and reduce interference between platforms. In Monte Carlo simulations, the authors report about 85 % inter-platform interference suppression compared with a simpler drone-and-stratospheric-platform baseline.
"This paper proposes a novel three-tier RIS-enhanced hierarchical aerial computing architecture that integrates a grid-powered reconfigurable intelligent surface-equipped base station (BS-RIS) alongside four RIS-equipped UAVs and a stratospheric HAP, so as to provide persistent, interference-managed 6G IoT coverage."
"The proposed architecture introduces a sub-array RIS partitioning mechanism in which each RIS panel, consisting of 256 elements divided into 4 sub-arrays, dedicates one sub-array per neighboring interfering platform, achieving 85 % inter-platform interference suppression (residual fraction [Formula: see text])."
"The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in emerging 6G networks demands computing architectures that simultaneously deliver high throughput, low latency, and persistent coverage across heterogeneous deployment environments."
Interference-aware optimization of three-tier RIS-enhanced hierarchical aerial computing: integrating terrestrial base stations for persistent 6G IoT coverage
Diaa, Ibrahim, Abd El-Haleem, Abdelhakam Scientific Reports Journal Level Xⓘ
