Fairness in Channel Allocation in a High Altitude Platform Communication System exploiting Cellular Overlap

This paper develops a new channel assignment strategy for a broadband multi-beam High Altitude Platform (HAP) architecture that exploits cell overlap. This scheme delivers equal data rate capacity to users and the blocking probability seen by the users is independent of the area. Exploiting cell overlap reduces the overall levels of blocking and improves the capacity of the system. As users in the overlap regions experience higher interfering levels, they require more channels to fulfil the minimum bits per connection per frame threshold required. The increased demand for channels is fulfilled thanks to the higher trunking efficiency in the areas of overlap. This threshold in conjunction with the RAF has ensured uniform blocking across the areas as well as equal data rates across the user connections. For the parameters chosen it is shown that the blocking probability is reduced from 4% to 2.6% by exploiting this technique.